Louis Sébastien Mercier: Revolution and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850)

By: Michael J. Mulryan

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Synopsis: French playwright, novelist, activist, and journalist Louis Sébastien Mercier (1740–1814) passionately captured scenes of social injustice in pre-Revolutionary Paris in his prolific oeuvre but today remains an understudied writer. In this penetrating study—the first in English devoted to Mercier in decades—Michael Mulryan explores his unpublished writings and urban chronicles, Tableau de Paris (1781–88) and Le Nouveau Paris (1798), in which he identified the city as a microcosm of national societal problems, detailed the conditions of the laboring poor, encouraged educational reform, and confronted universal social ills. Mercier’s rich writings speak powerfully to the sociopolitical problems that continue to afflict us as political leaders manipulate public debate and encourage absolutist thinking, deepening social divides. An outcast for his polemical views during his lifetime, Mercier has been called the founder of modern urban discourse, and his work a precursor to investigative journalism. This sensitive study returns him to his rightful place among Enlightenment thinkers.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
Book Size:: 272 Pages
ISBN-13:: 9781684484874
Related ISBNs:: 9781684484904, 9781684484881
Publisher:: Bucknell University Press
Date of Addition:: 09/15/23
Copyrighted By:: Michael J. Mulryan
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: History, Nonfiction, Art and Architecture, Literature and Fiction, Drama, Plays and Theater, Language Arts, Politics and Government, Sociology
Grade Levels:: College Freshman
Reading Age:: 18 and up
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.