Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary France

755 Pages·1995·2.64 MB·English

by  Sarah Maza

Private Lives and Public Affairs : The
Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary
title:
France Studies On the History of Society
and Culture ; 18
author: Maza, Sarah C.
publisher: University of California Press
isbn10 | asin: 0520201639
print isbn13: 9780520201637
ebook isbn13: 9780585079073
language: English
France--History--Louis XVI, 1774-1793,
France--History--Louis XV, 1715-1774,
subject Political corruption--France--History--18th
century, Trials--France--History--18th
century.
publication date: 1993
DC136.9.M39 1993eb
lcc: DC136.9.M39 1993eb
ddc: 944/.034
France--History--Louis XVI, 1774-1793,
France--History--Louis XV, 1715-1774,
subject: Political corruption--France--History--18th
century, Trials--France--History--18th
century.
Page i
Private Lives and Public Affairs
Page ii
Studies on the History of Society and Culture
Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, Editors
1. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, by Lynn
Hunt
2. The People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the Eighteenth
Century, by Daniel Roche
3. Pont-St-Pierre, 13981789: Lordship, Community, and Capitalism
in Early Modern France, by Jonathan Dewald
4. The Wedding of the Dead: Ritual, Poetics, and Popular Culture in
Transylvania, by Gail Kligman
5. Students, Professors, and the State in Tsarist Russia, by Samuel D.
Kassow
6. The New Cultural History, edited by Lynn Hunt
7. Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France: Politics, Psychology, and
Style, by Debora L. Silverman
8. Histories of a Plague Year: The Social and the Imaginary in
Baroque Florence, by Guilia Calvi
9. Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary
Russia, by Lynn Mally
10. Bread and Authority in Russia, 19141921, by Lars T. Lih
11. Territories of Grace: Cultural Change in the Seventeenth-Century
Diocese of Grenoble, by Keith P. Luria
12. Publishing and Cultural Politics in Revolutionary Paris,
17891810, by Carla Hesse
13. Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century
England, by Sonya O. Rose
14. Moral Communities: The Culture of Class Relations in the
Russian Printing Industry, 18671907, by Mark Steinberg
15. Bolshevik Festivals, 19171920, by James von Geldern
16. Venice's Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City,
by John Martin
17. Wondrous in His Saints: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in
Bavaria, by Philip M. Soergel
18. Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of
Prerevolutionary France, by Sarah Maza
19. Hooliganism: Crime, Culture, and Power in St. Petersburg,
19001914, by Joan Neuberger
Page iii
Private Lives and Public Affairs
The Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary France
Sarah Maza
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley / Los Angeles / London
Page iv
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 1993 by
The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Maza, Sarah C., 1953
Private lives and public affairs: the causes célèbres of prerevolution-
ary France / Sarah Maza.
p. cm.(Studies on the history of society and culture; 18)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-520-20163-9
1. FranceHistoryLouis XVI, 17741793. 2. FranceHis-
toryLouis XV, 17151774. 3. Political corruptionFranceHis-
tory18th century. 4. TrialsFranceHistory18th century.
I. Title. II. Series.
DC136.9.M39 1993
944'.034dc20 93-4518
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Material from chapters 1, 2, 4, and 6, respectively, has appeared in the
following: "The Véron-Morangiès Affair (17721773): The Social
Imagery of a Political Crisis," Historical Reflections/Réflexions
Historiques 18, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 10135; "The Rose-Girl of
Salency: Representations of Virtue in Prerevolutionary France,"
Eighteenth-Century Studies 22, no. 3 (1989): 395412; ''The Diamond
Necklace Affair Revisited (17851786): The Case of the Missing
Queen," in Eroticism and the Body Politic, ed. Lynn Hunt (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991): 6389; and "Domestic
Melodrama as Political Ideology: The Case of the Count of Sanois,"
American Historical Review 94, no. 5 (1989):124964.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Page v
For Jonathan and Brigitte,
Suzy and Sam,
and in memory of Hannah
Page vii
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1 19
The Social Imagery of Political Crisis, 17711773
2 68
The Rose-Girl of Salency: From Theatricality to Rhetoric
3 112
Private Lives and Public Affairs: Upper-Class Scandal,
17741778
4 167
The Diamond Necklace Affair, 17851786
5 212
"Innocent Blood Avenged": Emplotting Judicial Reform,
17851786
6 263
Domestic Drama and the Social Contract
Conclusion 313
Bibliography 325
Index 339