The cultural origins of the French Revolution /

The greatest asset of this book is its sensitivity to all aspects of the Enlightenment's relation to a revolution often called its "child." At last the pioneering contribution of Daniel Mornet's Les Origines intellectuelles de la r'evolution fran,caise. . .(Paris, 1933) is given adequate and accurate credit as being a serious and helpful guide to this subject, despite its obsolete methodology. However, when Chartier approaches the present he becomes enmeshed in the jargon of the brilliant and influential J"urgen Habermas, and, as a result, obscures his central argument. The reader is buried in the verbosity of a diffuse thesis and emerges frustrated that a book of great promise and learning cannot be set forth in a straightforward manner. Still, a good addition for libraries serving graduate students and faculty.-V. G. Wexler, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Chartier offers a challenging, authoritative synthesis of both old and new interpretations. Readers will be struck particularly by his recognition of studies done by English-language scholars. Three American historians who have especially influenced Chartier are Keith Baker (who has stressed the emergence of public opinion as a potent force with which the crown had to contend in the 18th century), Robert Darnton (who has shown that the hack writers of Grub Street were just as important as the major Enlightenment figures), and Dale Van Kley (who has demonstrated the significance of the political and religious controversies of the 1750s for the events beginning in 1789). Chartier argues that the Enlightenment was only one element in a wide range of cultural developments contributing to the secularization, the skepticism, and the decline of the crown's esteem in the decades prior to the Revolution. For scholars and specialists.-- Thomas J. Schaeper, St. Bonaventure Univ., N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.