Анисе Шарль Габриэль Лемонье. Чтение трагедии Вольтера "Китайский сирота" в салоне г-жи Жофрен.
Большая английская цитата об эпохе Просвещения себе на память
In the emerging marketplace for new books and new ideas, some of the most popular works were not from high intellectuals. They came from the pens of
more sensationalist essayists. Pamphlets charging widespread corruption, fraudulent stock speculation, and insider trading circulated widely. Sex, too, sold well. Works like Venus in the Cloister or the Nun in a Nightgown racked up as many sales as the now-classic works of the Enlightenment. Bawdy and irreligious, these vulgar best sellers exploited consumer demand—but they also seized the opportunity to mock authority figures, such as nuns and priests. Some even dared to go after the royal family, portraying Louis XV as fond of getting spanked or Marie Antoinette as having sex with her court confessor. In these cases, pornography—some of it even philosophical—spilled into the literary marketplace for political satire. Such works displayed the seamier side of the Enlightenment, but they also revealed a willingness (on the part of high and low intellectuals alike) to explore modes of thought that defied established beliefs and institutions.
The reading public itself helped generate new cultural institutions and practices. In Britain and Germany, book clubs and coffeehouses sprang up to cater to sober men of business and learning; here, aristocrats and well-to-do commoners could read news sheets or discuss stock prices, political affairs, and technological novelties. The same sort of noncourtly socializing occurred in Parisian salons, where aristocratic women presided. Speaking their minds more openly in these private settings than at court or at public assemblies, women here freely exchanged ideas with men. The most successful salons were the ones that spread witty gossip, but would-be philosophers and writers attended in hopes of finding jobs as secretaries or obtaining commissions for their projects. Moreover, libraries now opened their doors to the public.
It is important to note, however, that most funding for intellectuals still came from aristocrats, royal families, and the church. For example, in the German states, Enlightenment thinkers were chiefly university professors, bureaucrats, and pastors. Art collecting boomed—primarily because it gave aristocrats a way to display their good taste, wealth, and distance from the common people.
По Тичнеру и Адельману, "Worlds together, worlds apart : a history of the world from the beginnings of humankind to the present", 3 издание, том второй, стр. 566-567