Kings and desperate menTransaction Publishers, 1.11.2009 - 323 sivua The goal of Kings and Desperate Men is to provide a picture of eighteenth-century England up to the French Revolution. Kronenberger's work lies much closer to a social chronicle than an orthodox history, and is more concerned with manners and tastes than with treaties and wars. Kings and Desperate Men reveals what life was like for both aristocrats and commoners: their family lives, experience of larger society, habits, diet, fashions, religion, and artistic tastes. In tracing these topics for both city and country dwellers, he artfully communicates the very real division between the vivacity of London and the regular, fixed, and monotonous character of country life. The division is vital to understanding the age and the transformations it would experience. Yet Kronenberger does not ignore the more traditional historical landmarks. Kroenberger treats the characters of the leading political actors: Walpole, Bolingbroke, Burke, Fox, and Pitt, while providing the reader with a sweeping account of the formation of political parties and constitutional shifts of power between the monarchy and parliament. Students of the period who despair at its political complexities will fi nd much to appreciate in Kronenberger's condensed and easy to understand formulations. As for philosophy, Kronenberger refers to thinkers and ideas as they influence English life; especially Locke and Hume. Their ideas and reputations are explained as part of the character of society. The same is true for economics. More attention is given to the social gains of middle-class shopkeepers and the eighteenth-century zeal for stock speculation than to formal schools of thought. Especially notable is Kronenberger's treatment of both the arts and the artists of the eighteenth century-theatre, opera, music, literature, architecture, and painting. |
Kirjan sisältä
Tulokset 1 - 5 kokonaismäärästä 21
... Harley; above everything, the Queen's power to appoint and dismiss ministers — all these combined to shatter the Whig strength. One by one their leaders were deprived of oflice. Soon only Marlborough was left, and he at pasture with ...
... Harley's subordinate, chose from the first to become his rival. Brilliant, eloquent, headlong, devious, he had vast ambitions from which Harley was not only to be excluded but to which, indeed, he was a stumblingblock. Hence Bolingbroke ...
... Harley's bitter enmity -- though Boling— broke contrived to see himself as the injured party. When a French spy stabbed Harley and so made a popular martyr of him, Bolingbroke was furious that it was not he who had been stabbed; and when ...
... Harley was different. Harley was becoming ever more obnoxious to the Queen, ever laxer at his job, hence easier to remove and so supplant. Time pressed painfully, for the Queen was dying. Yet time was needed, for Bolingbroke had no ...
... Harley. Like a hounded man eluding captors, wherever he looked he saw Whigs in pursuit. His backing shaky, his plans uncrystallized, he was forced to assent that the Lord Treasurer's staff should go to the quasi-Whig Duke of Shrewsbury ...
Sisältö
3 | |
16 | |
Two or Three Characters | 25 |
Walpole and the House of Hanover | 42 |
Arisocrats with a Portrait of One of Them | 60 |
Shopkeepers | 89 |
The Poor | 98 |
The Arts | 108 |
Bath | 183 |
The Wesleyan Movement | 189 |
Empire and Revolution | 203 |
Kings and Counsellors | 215 |
The Great World | 247 |
The World Below | 263 |
The World Within | 273 |
The Bully and the Fop | 309 |
The Artist | 131 |
Country Matters | 161 |
The Country Gentleman | 168 |
Oxford and Cambridge | 175 |
READING LIST | 321 |
INDEX | i |
Muita painoksia - Näytä kaikki
Kings and Desperate Men: Life in Eighteenth-century England Louis Kronenberger Rajoitettu esikatselu - 2017 |
Kings and Desperate Men: Life in Eighteenth-century England Louis Kronenberger Rajoitettu esikatselu - 2017 |