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Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
Author Merrick, Jeffrey.

Title Order and disorder under the Ancien Régime / by Jeffrey Merrick.

Publication Info. Newcastle, UK : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007.

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (xii, 392 pages)
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary This collection of revised and previously unpublished articles explores aspects of the history of monarchy, family, suicide, and sodomy in early modern, especially eighteenth-century France. The durable but flexible traditions of the Ancien Régime not only sanctified but also limited the prerogatives of sovereigns over subjects and husbands/fathers/masters over wives, children, and servants. Private and public weakness and excess in those who ruled the kingdom and the household undermined their masculinity and legitimacy. Merrick analyzes expositions of and contestations about the origins, extent, and use and abuse of gendered royal and domestic authority in a wide variety of sources, including descriptions of beehives, pamphlets published during the Fronde, statues of Louis XV, police reports about disturbed subjects, parlementary remonstrances, Jansenist polemics, essays submitted to the Academy of Berlin, the memoirs of the marquis de Bombelles, and complaints of wives against husbands and marital separation cases in Paris. In principle, kings and husbands/fathers/masters preserved order in the kingdom and the household by controlling themselves as well as their subordinates. In practice, they sometimes provoked disorder and failed in many ways to prevent and punish disorder. Merrick's articles on suicide and sodomy not only revisit some celebrated incidents (the deaths of the dragoons Bourdeaux and Humain, who shot themselves on 25 December 1773) and notorious characters (the pederast marquis de Villette and tribade mademoiselle de Raucourt) but also document patterns in the lives and deaths of ordinary men and women. Based, like the articles on marital disputes, on extensive archival research, they investigate changes in jurisprudence and mentalities during the eighteenth century. As a whole, this volume challenges simplistic assumptions about absolutism, Enlightenment, and Revolution.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Monarchy -- France -- History -- 18th century.
Monarchy.
France.
History.
Chronological Term 18th century
Subject Male domination (Social structure) -- France -- History -- 18th century.
Male domination (Social structure)
Sex role -- France -- History -- 18th century.
Sex role.
France -- Moral conditions -- 18th century.
Moral conditions.
Chronological Term 1589-1799
Genre/Form Electronic books.
History.
Electronic books.
Subject Gender roles.
Other Form: Print version: Merrick, Jeffrey. Order and disorder under the Ancien Régime. Newcastle, UK : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007 9781847181404 (DLC) 2008396456 (OCoLC)173239350
ISBN 9781443807548 (electronic book)
1443807540 (electronic book)
1282191276
9781282191273
9781847181404
1847181406