Customs and Social Life Flashcards
Who teaches Casanova French, and what does he / she have to say about it?
- Crébillon
- ‘You must begin, no later than tomorrow, to make an effort to learn our language’.
Give examples of Casanova engaging in discussion about literature and poetry
- With an Abbé –> spoke about literature and proposed to meet up.
- ‘My principal aim … devote myself to the study of … (French) literature’.
- Crebillon discussed his own works.
- Critical of everything he watched, picking it apart, as in ‘Les fêtes venitiennes’.
Give examples of mass/extravagant gatherings
- Show off wealth –> ‘All the Italian actors in Paris wanted to show their wealth to me’.
- Going to Palais-Royal
- M. de Beauchamp, the Receiver-General of Finances, held a mass gathering.
How is obsession with court culture demonstrated?
- Consumerism –> e.g. snuff boxes of the Civet Cat made famous by the Duchess of Chartres –> only had to say she liked them = made fortune.
- Consumerism, e.g. King Louis made an innkeeper rich by merely asking for another glass of ‘ratafia’ –> people from court visited there; ‘the place to be, the drink to have’ –> instant wealth and fame.
- Gossip rife –> ‘Monsieur, everything is known at court’
How did customs surrounding women differ between Paris and Venice? Give examples.
- Casanova speaking to 13/14 year old ballet girls –> making crude statements that they might be pregnant –> Casanova assumes they are married.
- Famous opera singer, La Fel, had 3 children to 3 different men –> Casanova presumed they were all by the same man.
- ‘My inexperience with Parisian customs led me into many such blunders’.
- ‘I was not used to women encroaching on the rights of men’ –> talking of men impregnating many different women, but the inverse was not normal in his eyes
(In Fairchild’s writings) What did Perkins’ say when talking of French consumerism?
- Consumerism was characterised around a “small class of luxury items” and “a large mass of consumer-resisting peasants”.
(In Fairchild’s writings) What did people at the time say about France and consumerism?
- Said that France was the place of fashion of consumerism, not England.
(In Fairchild’s writings)
- What are ‘populuxe’ goods?
- Give an example of them
- What they symbolised
- How does it relate to Casanova
- Populuxe goods –> cheap copies of aristocratic versions.
- Umbrellas, snuff boxes.
- Symbols of aristocratic life, not usefulness.
- Casanova = when hearing of people buying snuff when they heard it was the best thing from a noble / respectable name.
(In Fairchild’s writings) When did France see significant changes in consumption?
- 1725-85
(In Fairchild’s writings) What was the changing belief regarding consumption?
- People weren’t restricted to hierarchal societal order.
(In Baird and Ionescu’s writings) What did Marx say about commodities?
- They were “social things”.
(In Baird and Ionescu’s writings) What is commodity fetishism?
- Society’s extreme obsession with material objects.
(In Baird and Ionescu’s writings) What does it mean we look through an object?
- Look through it to see what it discloses about history, society, culture –> above all, what it says about us.
(In Baird and Ionescu’s writings) What does it mean when we look at an object as something other than what it really is?
- Look at the things imperfection and its symbolic or spiritual value.
(In Baird and Ionescu’s writings) What does consumerism do on a societal level?
- Organise our existing trends.
- Promote stereotypes and desires.
- Threaten status.
