Ordenes politikk

Anmeldelse af Jonas Ross Kjærgård: Reimagining Society in Eighteenth-Century French Literature. Happiness and Human Rights. New York: Routledge, 2018, 221 sider

Blikk for virkelighet

Le Mercure galant, launched in 1672 and appearing monthly in Paris from 1678, is one of the earliest literary periodicals in Europe. Despite its broad and eager readership, and the longevity of this manifold journalistic phenomenon, the periodical has received surprisingly little attention in research on the early formation of a modern âpublic sphereâ following and revising Habermasâ groundbreaking study from 1962. This paper examines how Le Mercure galant managed to engage readers of both sexes from all over France in a public debate about private and trivial matters, about love and marriage, education and fashion, moral principles and appropriate conduct. It traces the important rhetorical forms and communicative strategies used, with a special focus on the editorâs presentation of so called âveritable storiesâ (histoires véritables) from the everyday world. The paper highlights the didactic functions of these stories, based on the age old rhetoric of examples. But it also demonstrates how certain stories are presented as cases, with dilemmas to be solved by the readers, in a way that is connected to the (juridical, theological and literary) practice of casuistry. The play with dilemmas opened a secular, public room for discussions â which adds to the âmodernityâ of a periodical that already from its start was associated with everything âmodernâ

Følsomhet og opplysning

We know that tears and weeping were important cultural signs in eighteenth century France. But what was the status of feelings and emotions within the Enlightenment thinking, in what we call the Age of Reason? The fin de siècle of the seventeenth century certainly brought new elements to the semantic field of feelings. Sensibilité was one of the notions that obtained a whole range of new, positive evaluations and functions, not at least as a social and moral category. When the notion of sensibility appears in different articles of the Encyclopédie (1751-1774), the main cleavage is between a âmoralâ and a âphysicalâ sensibility. In this article, I attempt to explore some of the dilemmas, contradictions and fruitful dynamics of the history of the notion of sensibility, as it can be established from reading the different articles on sensibilité in the Encyclopédie. It appears to be a notion that challenges age-old tensions as to the nature of man; it is mediating and blurring the distinctions between body and soul, sensation and emotion, inner and outer, between the subject and its physical and social environment. My main argument is that a certain communicative capacity must be seen as the general characteristic of this eighteenth century sensibility. It is a capacity that makes possible the communication between different parts of the individual, and between the individual and its physical and social environment. As such, it made the sensibility even more important to the definition of human nature than reason itself, in the Age of Reason

Formens makt og materialitet: Om studiet av kunnskapens former i katekismer og skipslogger

The power and materiality of form. On studying the forms of knowledge in catechisms and ship’s logs. The article argues that in the emerging field of the history of knowledge, with its focus on the production, circulation and exchange of knowledge, explorations of forms will represent a valuable addition. Form is related to genre. Yet, while the identification of genres is largely based on linguistic, literary or rhetorical criteria, form is also about structures and materiality as well as about practical and institutional preconditions. Form often attracts less attention than contents, although the form makes this content recognizable as knowledge. Our argument builds on the exploration of two different early modern knowledge forms, the catechism and the ship's log respectively. Both demonstrate how form is decisive in defining contents as authoritative knowledge. They also illustrate how form is a prerequisite to enable knowledge to circulate and be part of cultural exchange, and thus to be socially efficient. The forms serve to codify existing knowledge, but also to the production and circulation of new insights. When forms like the log and the catechism are examined historically, however, they can also be seen to live their own lives in a tension between stability and change. The forms themselves become objects of negotiations, change and innovation

News versus Opinion: The State, the Press, and the Northern Enlightenment

In this chapter, I aim to show that concerns beyond the political were involved in the sharp distinction between news and opinion that was articulated in the censorship instruction. I will argue that the structure of the media landscape in eighteenth-century Denmark-Norway was shaped by the controlling state which based its conception of news – as distinct from opinion – also on epistemological worries concerning the reliability of truth claims which haunted all of Europe at the time. I will raise the question of whether this distinction had only repressive effects and will try to show how the ‘censorship rescript’ of 1701 can be said to have contributed productively to shaping not only the book market, but the entire media landscape in eighteenth-century Denmark-Norway. My contention is that the sharp distinction between news and opinion opened a favourable space for the medium of the journals, turning the craze for news into what was referred to at the time as a fast-spreading ‘writing disease’, an urge to express one’s own knowledge and opinion on a variety of matters. As a consequence, the journals, rather than the news press, became the vehicle for the phenomenon that we can call the ‘Northern Enlightenment’

Enevelde, offentlighet og Peter Frederik Suhms hemmeligheter

I 1918 ble det utgitt et særtrykk av det danske tidsskriftet Vor Fortid som inneholdt en tidligere upublisert tekst av den danske historikeren, adelsmannen og frie intellektuelle Peter Frederik Suhm (1728-1798). Tittelen på denne teksten er «Hemmelige efterretninger om de danske konger efter souveraineteten». Det dreier seg om Suhms relativt korte, åpenhjertige, kritiske og frivole anekdotebaserte skildring av den politiske historien fra eneveldets innføring i 1660 og fram til ca. 1775, da de stadig mer dagbokspregete nedtegnelsene stopper brått med dronning Caroline Mathildes dødsdag. Ifølge Suhm-biografen Chr. Bruun var disse små og «slemme Historier» eller «Notitser» kjent av svært få personer på 1700-tallet. Blant disse få var litteraturhistorikeren og universitetsbiblioteker Rasmus Nyerup, som hadde laget en avskrift på 1790-tallet. Teksten er imidlertid ikke å finne i hans Suhmania fra 1799 (med undertittelen Eftersamling av Peter Friedrich Suhms for en Del tilforn utrykte Smaaskrifter etc). Hva er grunnen til at «Hemmelige efterretninger om de danske konger efter souveraineteten» aldri ble trykt under eneveldet? Hvorfor skrev Suhm den, og hva slags tekst er egentlig dette? Og hva forteller den om forholdet mellom politikk, hemmelighold og offentlighetens toleransegrenser under eneveldet? [...] Dette er en akseptert versjon av et kapittel i boken "Eneveldet før undergangen. Politisk kultur i Norge 1660-1814". © 2017 Scandinavian Academic Pres

Konger uten klær. Hemmelige historier som eneveldigkritisk sjanger

Her vil jeg løfte fram to tekster som tydelig benytter seg av dens sjangermarkører, og som berører politiske forhold i Skandinavia: den anonymt publiserte Anecdotes de Suèdes fra 1716 og Peter Frederik Suhms «Hemmelige efterretninger om de danske konger efter souveraineteten», som ble skrevet på 1770-tallet og først publisert i 1918. Målet med denne artikkelen er å vise hvordan disse to tekstene viderefører ulike sider ved sjangeren hemmelig historie, men samtidig hvordan de begge bruker sjangeren til å artikulere en maktkritikk. På hvert sitt vis illustrerer disse to skandinaviske versjonene at hemmelig-historie-skriving ikke bare hadde potensial til å kaste avslørende og kritisk lys over hemmelighetene til enkeltherskere og andre maktpersoner, slik vi ser det i Prokopios’ hemmelige historie om keiserparet Justinian og Theodora eller i en del franske og engelske pikante anekdoter fra de øvre lags private gemakker. De viser at avsløringssjangeren kunne brukes til angrep på hele eneveldet som styringsform