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Language Choice in Enlightenment Europe

Education, Sociability, and Governance

Vladislav Rjéoutski Willem Frijhoff Andrea Bruschi Madeleine Strien-Chardonneau Olga Khavanova Michael Rocher Ivana Horbec Maja Matasoviç Ekaterina Kislova

9789462984714
234 pages
Amsterdam University Press
Overview
This multinational collection of essays challenges the traditional image of a monolingual Ancient Regime in Enlightenment Europe, both East and West. Its archival research explores the important role played by selective language use in social life and in the educational provisions in the early constitution of modern society. A broad range of case studies show how language was viewed and used symbolically by social groups - ranging from the nobility to the peasantry - to develop, express, and mark their identities.
Author Bio
Dr. Vladislav Rjéoutski, research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Moscow. Co-director of the DFG-funded research project on the languages of diplomacy in the eighteenth-century Russia, co-author (with Derek Offord and Gesine Argent) of: The French Language in Russia. A Social, Political, Cultural, and Literary History (Amsterdam: AUP, 2018). Willem Frijhoff is Emeritus Professor of Modern History at VU University, Amsterdam, and is now G.Ph. Verhagen Professor of Cultural History at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. His scholarly work focuses on cultural, linguistic and religious identities in early modern France, the Netherlands and North America.