Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders Don Herzog.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Herzog, Don.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Conservadurismo--Gran Bretaña.

Conservadurismo.

Democracia.

Gran Bretaña--Condiciones sociales--Siglo XIX.

Gran Bretaña.

Gran Bretaña--Condiciones sociales--Siglo XVIII.

Gran Bretaña--Política y gobierno--Siglo XIX.

Gran Bretaña--Política y gobierno--1760-1820.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 559 pages)

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University, 2000.

Summary:

Conservatism was born as an anguished attack on democracy. So argues Don Herzog in this arrestingly detailed exploration of England's responses to the French Revolution. Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders ushers the reader into the politically lurid world of Regency England. Deftly weaving social and intellectual history, Herzog brings to life the social practices of the Enlightenment. In circulating libraries and Sunday schools, deferential subjects developed an avid taste for reading; in coffeehouses, alehouses, and debating societies, they boldly dared to argue about politics. Such conservatives as Edmund Burke gaped with horror, fearing that what radicals applauded as the rise of rationality was really popular stupidity or worse. Subjects, insisted conservatives, ought to defer to tradition--and be comforted by illusions. Urging that abstract political theories are manifest in everyday life, Herzog unflinchingly explores the unsavory emotions that maintained and threatened social hierarchy. Conservatives dished out an unrelenting diet of contempt. But Herzog refuses to pretend that the day's radicals were saints. Radicals, he shows, invested in contempt as enthusiastically as did conservatives. Hairdressers became newly contemptible, even a cultural obsession. Women, workers, Jews, and blacks were all abused by their presumed superiors. Yet some of the lowly subjects Burke had the temerity to brand a swinish multitude fought back. How were England's humble subjects transformed into proud citizens? And just how successful was the transformation? At once history and political theory, absorbing and disquieting, Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders challenges our own commitments to and anxieties about democracy.

Contents:

Cover Page

Half-title Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication Page

Contents

Preface

Enlightenment

One: A Conservative Inheritance

Two: Of Coffeehouses and Schoolmasters

Three: Poison and Antidote

Four: The Politics of Reason

Contempt

Five: The Politics of the Emotions

Six: A Guide to the Menagerie: Women and Workers

Seven: A Guide to the Menagerie: Blacks and Jews

Eight: Self and Other

Nine: Faces in the Mirror

Standing

Ten: Wollstonecraft's Hair

Eleven: The Trouble with Hairdressers

Twelve: The Fate of a Trope

Index.

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691057415

0691057419

9780691228372

069122837X

OCLC:

1245662491