HomeBlog / Latest Newsenlightenment

  • The salon myth

    • March 27, 2021
    • Posted by:
    • Category: Venice and Paris
    No Comments
      Many people with a passing interest in history will be familiar with the Enlightenment salons of 18th century Paris, lead by such redoubtable salonnières as Madame Geoffrin and Madame Deffand.  Salon culture was supposedly a gathering of the high-minded and sophisticated elite of French society and beyond, bound together by the sort of radical
    read more

  • Crime and punishment

    • February 27, 2021
    • Posted by:
    • Category: Flashbacks
    No Comments
    During his lifetime Casanova will have witnessed a sea-change in Europe in terms of its attitudes towards crime and punishment. Largely because of the influence of Enlightenment ideas, the fate awaiting felons at the start of the eighteenth-century was very different to that awaiting them at the end. Fortunately for Casanova, who was imprisoned on
    read more

  • Empiricism

    • June 20, 2020
    • Posted by:
    • Category: Flashbacks
    No Comments
    One of the great intellectual themes of eighteenth-century Enlightenment explored by Melvyn Bragg – here.   27 long form articles on Casanova’s life and times are freely available here ‘Casanova in Paris: The Shadows of the King’ is freely available here.   #locke #empiricism #europe #eighteenthcentury #enlightenment #bragg
    read more