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

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.