18 th Century Salons & The Enlightenment

1. 18th Century Salons & The Enlightenment

2. Questions? • Where do you meet your friends? • What do you talk about?

3. Louis XIV Court • Moliere, a French playwright, meets with his patron, Louis XIV • The most trusted courtiers stood near the king. • The king’s private space was separate from most courtiers

4. Louis XIV Court • “The king’s court was a very formal place. There were strict rules about how courtiers had to dress, when and where they could sit, and when and where they could speak to certain people. Even courtiers who had the privilege of joining a conversation chose their words carefully. Some topics were objectionable to church authorities or high-ranking nobility. Court gossip and intrigue often dominated discussion.” Glencoe, World History Textbook, pg. 564

5. The 18th Century Salon • In 18th century France, a popular gathering called a salon attracted great writers and thinkers to the homes of French hostesses.

6. What is a Salon? • “The French word salon, refers to a parlor or living room, a main gathering space in a private home. In the 18th century, the salons became gathering places for intellectual conversation. Writers, scientists, and philosophers met weekly to discuss important discoveries and new works of poetry and theater.” Glencoe, World History, pg. 564

7. What is a Salon? • A salon is a gathering of intellectual, social, political, and cultural elites under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation. • These gatherings often consciously following Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate"

8. What did a Salon look like? A Reading in the Salon of Mme Geoffrin, 1755

9. What did a Salon look like?

10. What did a Salon look like? • The painting depicts an English-style tea in the Four-Mirror Salon of the Palais du Temple in Paris in 1766.

11. What did a Salon look like? • The Rothschild Room - 18th Century French salon • It belonged to a second-generation member of the new aristocracy, the Count de Courbet, and was part of his Paris townhouse on the rue de Bac, designed by François Debias-Aubry between 1741 and 1745.

12. Salon Facts • Most salon hosts were women, while guests were mainly men. • Participants came from middle class as well as aristocracy. • In the salon, a guests good manners and original thought were highly prized displays of the guest’s wealth and standing.

13. Questions? • How did salons foster the spread of ideas? • How would you feel as a guest at one of these functions? • How would you feel being in the presence of the king?

14. Rene Descartes • “It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.” • “Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.”

15. John Locke • “Our incomes are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to trip.” • “Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.”

16. Isaac Newton • “If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought.” • “To me there has never been a higher source of earthly honor or distinction than that connected with advances in science.”

17. Montesquieu • “An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.” • “Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.” • “Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.”

18. Voltaire • “Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.” • “History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.”

19. Denis Diderot • “Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.” • “There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.”

20. Adam Smith & laissez-faire • “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” • “What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?”

21. Cesare Beccaria & Justice • “For a punishment to be just it should consist of only such gradations of intensity as suffice to deter men from committing crimes.” • “Happy is the nation without a History.”

22. Mary Wollstonecraft • “Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.” • “The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.”

23. John Wesley • "Do all the good you can,By all the means you can,In all the ways you can,In all the places you can,At all the times you canTo all the people you canAs long as ever you can !”