« Older Posts — Newer Posts »

'[fragmentary] Chapter 2
Elizabethan Drama Disdains the Bourgeoisie'

Posted April 17th, 2007 by Deirdre McCloskey in Bourgeois Towns | 5 Comments »

Under the heading Part I. What Needs to be Explained: The Rhetoric of the Aristocratic and Bourgeois English Something happened to the standing of a bourgeois life in England between 1600 and 1848. With whom? How to prove? Where exactly? In what respects exactly? A sheer, material, Marxist "ris[...]

'Chapter 3
The Bourgeoisie Measures'

Posted April 17th, 2007 by Deirdre McCloskey in Bourgeois Towns, The Bourgeois Era | 5 Comments »

One countable piece of evidence that bourgeois values were becoming dominate in England in the 17th and 18th centuries is the new, dominate role of counting in giving evidence. It is assuredly modern. The pre-modern attitude---which survives of course in many a non-quantitative modern---shows in a[...]

'[extremely fragmentary] Chapter 4
The New Values Were Triumphant…'

Posted April 17th, 2007 by Deirdre McCloskey in Bourgeois Towns, The Bourgeois Era | 1 Comment »

...by 1848, or 1790, or 1710 Not the mechanical "class position determined ideas" of the "rise of the bourgeoisie" notion. Acknowledge its force, for what it's worth. But rising in numbers or not, bourgeois values "rose." The rhetoric change. Davidoff and Hall here. A chapter or two showing th[...]

'Chapter 5
The Dutch Were Bourgeois'

Posted April 17th, 2007 by Deirdre McCloskey in Bourgeois Towns, The Bourgeois Era | 3 Comments »

Profit More in Request than Honor A chapter under the heading: Part II. How It Happened in Venice, Amsterdam, Glasgow, London, and Philadelphia What made such talk conceivable was the "rise" of the bourgeoisie in northwestern Europe. The rise was more than numbers: it was a rise in prestige. Th[...]

'[fragmentary] Chapter 6
Precursors Were Ancient, But Impermanent'

Posted April 17th, 2007 by Deirdre McCloskey in Bourgeois Towns, The Bourgeois Era | No Comments »

Bourgeois republics have usually been undermined by resurgent aristocracy or oligarchy: Dutch, Venetian stories, leaving Britain as unique by 1750. Britain was a freshly bourgeois society. But of course bourgeois life is ancient, and so the liberalism and other virtues that go along with it have t[...]

'[mere beginning of] Chapter 7
How the British Got That Way'

Posted April 17th, 2007 by Deirdre McCloskey in Bourgeois Towns, The Bourgeois Era | 2 Comments »

Josiah Child arguing against guild regulation of cloth (quoted in Lipson, Hist., p., 118, q.v.): "if we intend to have the trade of the world we must imitate the Dutch." And so they did, in many things: naval, financial, etc. British imitation of Dutch in late 17th C. Defeat in the Solent? Othe[...]

'[mere beginning of] Chapter 8
The Literary Impulse: Defoe, Addison, Gay'

Posted April 17th, 2007 by Deirdre McCloskey in Bourgeois Towns, The Bourgeois Era | No Comments »

Defoe and The Spectator and The London Merchant; the novel as bourgeois. English novels. But the holy ground for the bourgeoisie became, of course, 18th-century Britain. No one in the 16th century would have thought of England (and less so Scotland) as a bourgeois nation. Look at the portray[...]

'[some notes for] Chapter 9
Bourgeois Life Came to be Philosophized around 1700'

Posted April 17th, 2007 by Deirdre McCloskey in Bourgeois Towns, The Bourgeois Era | 2 Comments »

What was odd was precisely the philosophizing of bourgeois virtues, including its representation in literature, such as in the novel (its very existence as a genre: its focus on individual ethical development as against picaresque adventures in a haunted world [Quixote as the ironic stage on the ver[...]
« Older Posts — Newer Posts »