The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment

by Dena Goodman

In the 1st major reinterpretation of the French Enlightenment in 20 years, Goodman moves beyond the traditional approach to the Enlightenment as a chapter in Western intellectual history & examines its deeper significance as cultural history. She finds the very epicenter of the Enlightenment in a community of discourse known as the Republic of Letters, where salons governed by women advanced the Enlightenment project "to change the common way of thinking." Goodman details the history of the Republic of Letters in the Parisian salons, where men & women, philosophes & salonnieres, together not only introduced reciprocity into intellectual life thru the practices of letter writing & polite conversation but also developed a republican model of government that was to challenge the monarchy. Providing a new understanding of women's importance in the Enlightenment, Goodman demonstrates that in the Republic of Letters men & women played complementary & unequal roles. Salonnieres governed the Republic of Letters by enforcing rules of polite conversation that made possible a discourse characterized by liberty & civility. Goodman chronicles the story of the Republic of Letters from its earliest formation thru major periods of change: the production of the Encyclopedia, the proliferation of a print culture that widened circles of readership beyond the control of salon governance & the early years of the French Revolution. Altho the legacy of the Republic of Letters remained a force in French cultural & political life, in the 1780s men formed new intellectual institutions that asserted their ability to govern themselves & that marginalized women. The Republic of Letters introduces provocative explanations both for the failure of the Enlightenment & for the role of the Enlightenment in the French Revolution.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Research, Nonfiction, France, Sociology, Books About Books

352 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1994

Reviews

[Maja Solar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I appreciate the author's effort, hard work and detailed reading of various literature, I think that her thesis are fundamentally wrong and too idealistic. This social history of culture is primarily lacking in a more fundamental economic starting point from which one could understand that the so-called Republic of Letters was not so much autonomous and separated from the sphere of the crown/court and the sphere of the Academy & that the role the author gives salon hostesses as participants of the Enlightenment Republic of Letters is exaggerated. The approach is fundamentally wrong because it relies on Jürgen Habermas's concept of the salons and Republic of Letters as public spheres. But these spaces of sociability and knowledge remain essentially the spaces of elites, and the role of women in them is still limited by gender stereotypes and class positions. About how the salons are hybrid places & are not places for meaningful communication and critical discussions, and how they remain places that preserve inequality and produce new dependency relationships is best written by Antoine Lilti. I can not recommend enough his fantastic book on salons, which also criticizes the approach of Dena Goodman (in French:Le monde des salons : Sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe siècle; in English: World of the Salons: Sociability and Worldliness in Eighteenth-Century Paris). And our dear Rousseau, whom Dena Goodman does not really like, remains a better reference for describing this period of history than this book...

[alex lamy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read a couple chapters for a paper but found it interesting so I decided to finish it

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This seems at first glance to be a perfect contribution to the 1990s golden age of women’s and gender history, which makes it a little odd that Goodman packages it as a cultural history rather than as a gender history. She does claim to be writing a “feminist history,” but she doesn't make a big deal about it. Perhaps she was worried that overtly categorizing it under the “women and gender” label would ghettoize it, but the problem is that people who specialize in gender and could include her book in their readings will not necessarily find it.
This would be a shame, because her argument is really interesting. Goodman radically reinterprets 17th and 18th century French society, arguing that the French state was composed of two distinct but dependant parts: the monarchical government and the Republic of Letters. These made up a “double helix of early modern France,” and one half of the helix was gendered feminine and depended on the active participation of women. This was the Republic, the world of the female salonnieres, who hosted regular gatherings of philosophes in their homes. Previous historians have tended to dismiss the importance of these women to the enlightenment project, and in fact many have treated the salonnieres as constraints on intellectual innovation and freedom. According to this interpretation, men could only do the serious intellectual work of the enlightenment in the absence of women. But Goodman rejects this argument. Far from being a constraint, women were absolutely necessary to the political identity of the Republic of Letters. The Republic was born and grew partly in response to the very contentious world of medieval and early modern education, which was founded on disputation and argument. Female salonnieres, by contrast, provided balance and conflict resolution, a civil forum for the peaceful sharing of ideas, and this alternative intellectual culture could not function without an active, guiding female influence. Additionally, the salonnieres provided “republican” authority, in contrast to royal authority, which resolved disputes through the imposition of ultimate power. The salonniere, Goodman argues, was akin to the president of a Republic, arbitrating disputes through mutual consent. When debate left the salons it became too competitive and cutthroat.
By the end of her book, Goodman has made a great argument for the importance of both actual women and the dynamic between femininity and masculinity to interpretations of the French Enlightenment and the French Revolution. This should be on both French Enlightenment reading lists AND gender history reading lists.

[Jennifer Uhlich · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best kind of nonfiction for me pushes different buttons: it tells me stuff about things I want to know, it tells me stuff I didn't know I wanted to know, and it gives me lots of yummy further reading. This did all three. While the text was naturally a little academic-dry at times

(I've only had one cup of tea this morning so further qualifying academic-dry is not on the table, sorry)

and I could have done without all the Habermas

(yes, okay, I've totally forgotten Habermas, it has nothing to do with the actual use of Habermas and everything to do with the Habermas reminding me just how sievelike my aging brain has become, because I really did read Habermas once upon a time, I remember the book clearly, I remember the course, I just don't remember a freakin' thing Habermas actually wrote)

I found the descriptions of the salonistes and the circulation of print and ideas utterly fascinating and far more insightful than other articles I've read to date. Plus Goodman resurrects a Frenchman's invented verb "to Geoffrinize", as in to shape and civilize group conversation, as in discussions really suck without a sane woman in the room keeping wound-up men on topic. I plan on bringing Geoffrinize back into daily speech.

This proves my theory yet again that half of the good stuff of any scholarly work is in the footnotes.

But like all good, serendipitous readings, it also dovetailed with some interesting (and frightening) discussions happening in "the real world", or at least that internetty virtualthingy: about women writing opinion pieces and the degree of violence in the more troll-y responses, about this kind of tide of misogyny that seems to be sweeping over everything lately . . . or just rearing its head higher than usual. Because there's nothing like a fake name and a screen to give people implicit permission to really let fly. This pulls together several different examples:

http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/6751...

We've come a long way from tea at Madame Geoffrin's, and not in a good way. Isn't civilization supposed to be perpetually improving?

[Enrico Amatori · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author has an agenda. She wasn't trying to write a cultural history, she was trying to write an opinion piece on how we should, in her opinion, we should see literary and cultural history. She massively exagerate the role of women based on (flawed) feminist premises. What could I say? If interpreted in bona fide the author is just ignorant and a victim of propaganda; interpreted in mala fide, instead, we could see the author WRITING this piece of feminist propaganda that, as always, lack the depths of knowledge and context of the REAL history. Revisionism, it seems, is acceptable if the revisionist is a feminist "professor".

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well written and interesting read for those interested in the origins of the French Enlightenment and Revolution.

[Kristi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, I found this book too dry to spark my interest and pull me into the historical narrative. I was intrigued by Goodman's attention to the role of women in the salons, but owing to my own lack of knowledge about French culture during this period, I felt disconnected from the text and could not find my "hook" into it. This history may appeal more to those with a working knowledge of the topic; it was perhaps not the best book for me to begin with.

[Saskia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only read passages for research, yet from what I have read, I have encountered conflicting scholarship in direct response to this book (arguments that make more sense to me). Curiously entitled "a cultural history", Goodman essentially applies 20th-Century cultural thinking to 18th-Century history and it doesn't quite fit. Perhaps I am too cynical but it is too idealistic.

[Lisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

French Enlightenment...boring. She was way too technical for my liking and you get lost in the translation. I'm sure there are better books that execute their points on the French Enlightenment than Goodman did.