The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture
The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe 1660-1789 by T.C.W. Blanning
Oxford University Press, 479 pp. £25 ISBN 0-19-822745-0
Many if not most of the cultural phenomena of the modern world derive from the “long eighteenth century”’, claims Tim Blanning in his vigorously-argued, crisp, lively and coat-trailing study: ‘the periodical, the newspaper, the novel, the journalist, the critic, the public library, the concert, the art exhibition, the public museum, the national theatre’. The items on this list, together with other institutions such as the court, the nation and the coffee-house, are among the topics discussed in this intriguing combination of a lucid and judicious synthesis of recent monographs on the Old Regime and an original, idiosyncratic essay on the social history of music.
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