Dorinda Outram – författare

Upplysningsepoken flödade av diskussioner om människans natur, sanningen och Gud. Den präglades av internationella utbyten av idéer, folk och guld. Men betydde upplysningen samma sak för män och kvinnor, för rika och fattiga, för européer och icke-européer?

Dorinda Outram placerar in perioden i de bredare sociala förändringarna, och visar hur tolkningarna av upplysningen fortsätter att förändras i takt med samtidens socio-ekonomiska trender. Med stöd av en stor samling dokument online innehåller boken en uppdaterad översikt över epokens viktigaste idéer samt en utökad behandling av ekonomi och imperialism.

Upplysningen är måsteläsning för den som vill förstå 1700-talets historia och filosofi.  

DORINDA OUTRAM är professor emerita i historia vid University of Rochester i New York. Hon har tidigare skrivit en rad verk om den franska revolutionen och Frankrikes historia. Standardverket Upplysningen är den första av hennes böcker som översätts till svenska.  

"Denna nya utgåva av Outrams framgångsrika syntes om upplysningen har berikats med ett nytt kapitel om den politiska ekonomin. [...] Det större sammanhanget med kolonialism, slaveri, handel och vetenskap har bara gjort en utmärkt sammanfattning av upplysningens viktigaste drag än mer användbar." Karin Friedrich, University of Aberdeen     

"Outrams Upplysningen har visat sitt bestående värde som en fantastiskt välinformerad introduktion till perioden ..." Ritchie Robertson, University of Oxford

Unveiling the nearly lost world of the court fools of eighteenth-century Germany, Dorinda Outram shows that laughter was an essential instrument of power. Whether jovial or cruel, mirth altered social and political relations.

Outram takes us first to the court of Frederick William I of Prussia, who emerges not only as an administrative reformer and notorious militarist but also as a "master of fools," a ruler who used fools to prop up his uncertain power. The autobiography of the itinerant fool Peter Prosch affords a rare insider’s view of the small courts in Catholic south Germany, Austria, and Bavaria. Full of sharp observations of prelates and princes, the autobiography also records episodes of the extraordinary cruelty for which the German princely courts were notorious. Joseph Fröhlich, court fool in Dresden, presents more appealing facets of foolery. A sharp salesman and hero of the Meissen factories, he was deeply attached to the folk life of fooling. The book ends by tying the growth of Enlightenment skepticism to the demise of court foolery around 1800.

Outram’s book is invaluable for giving us such a vivid depiction of the court fool and especially for revealing how this figure can shed new light on the wielding of power in Enlightenment Europe.

Science, Enlightenment and Revolution brings together thirteen papers by renowned historian Dorinda Outram. Published between 1976 and 2019 and scattered in a variety of journals and collected volumes, these articles are published together here for the first time.

During her distinguished career, Outram has made significant contributions to the history of science, to the history and historiography of the Enlightenment, to gender history, to the history of geographical exploration, and to the historical uses of language. This volume also includes other writings by Outram, comprising an unpublished introduction in the form of an intellectual autobiography. Placing this together with her collected academic papers offers readers an overview of her development as an historian and a writer.

This book is important reading for scholars and students of early modern Europe, as well as those interested in the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and gender studies. (CS 1101).

Science, Enlightenment and Revolution brings together thirteen papers by renowned historian Dorinda Outram. Published between 1976 and 2019 and scattered in a variety of journals and collected volumes, these articles are published together here for the first time.

During her distinguished career, Outram has made significant contributions to the history of science, to the history and historiography of the Enlightenment, to gender history, to the history of geographical exploration, and to the historical uses of language. This volume also includes other writings by Outram, comprising an unpublished introduction in the form of an intellectual autobiography. Placing this together with her collected academic papers offers readers an overview of her development as an historian and a writer.

This book is important reading for scholars and students of early modern Europe, as well as those interested in the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and gender studies. (CS 1101).

This book, first published in 1989, is an analysis of what changed in 1789 with the French Revolution and what contemporary life owes to the event. It was not simply a series of events with worldwide repercussions, but also represented the foundation of the middle-class domination of social, cultural and political space, which survives today and is the site of major crises of public culture. One such site is the body. In spite of its prominence in consumer culture as an object of adornment and beautification, the human body retains none of its historic dignity and authority. The argument of this book is that the French Revolution played a crucial part in this diminution of the body. It traces revolutionary models of behaviour around the body and public life, and explains how such myths as the division between public and private, male and female worlds, and such masculine values as ‘objectivity’ were an integral part of the new public world created by the revolutionary middle class.

This book, first published in 1989, is an analysis of what changed in 1789 with the French Revolution and what contemporary life owes to the event. It was not simply a series of events with worldwide repercussions, but also represented the foundation of the middle-class domination of social, cultural and political space, which survives today and is the site of major crises of public culture. One such site is the body. In spite of its prominence in consumer culture as an object of adornment and beautification, the human body retains none of its historic dignity and authority. The argument of this book is that the French Revolution played a crucial part in this diminution of the body. It traces revolutionary models of behaviour around the body and public life, and explains how such myths as the division between public and private, male and female worlds, and such masculine values as ‘objectivity’ were an integral part of the new public world created by the revolutionary middle class.

This book, first published in 1984, examines the lifetime of Georges Cuvier, and in his constant and varying struggles to retain his position both as a politician and as a leading naturalist we find displayed almost all of the political tensions of Restoration France. Our understanding of the new French intellectual elite is enhanced if we can explain what sort of power this group wielded, and how it related to the structure of politics as a whole. Cuvier’s career epitomises this relationship to the highest degree. Examination of the building of his career under the Directory and Empire offers many new insights into the way the expanding market for science, the restructuring of society as a whole, and the moral authority of science itself could be utilised as resources in the making of a reputation. The influence of scientific competition and controversy on Cuvier’s scientific work is examined at length, and it is argued that they exerted a decisive effect on the structure of his biological and geological thinking.

This book, first published in 1984, examines the lifetime of Georges Cuvier, and in his constant and varying struggles to retain his position both as a politician and as a leading naturalist we find displayed almost all of the political tensions of Restoration France. Our understanding of the new French intellectual elite is enhanced if we can explain what sort of power this group wielded, and how it related to the structure of politics as a whole. Cuvier’s career epitomises this relationship to the highest degree. Examination of the building of his career under the Directory and Empire offers many new insights into the way the expanding market for science, the restructuring of society as a whole, and the moral authority of science itself could be utilised as resources in the making of a reputation. The influence of scientific competition and controversy on Cuvier’s scientific work is examined at length, and it is argued that they exerted a decisive effect on the structure of his biological and geological thinking.