320
BOOKS
tions even have "cultural origins." He ends with the flat conclusion that
the Enlightenment and the Revolution were both "inscribed together in
a long-term process." Instead of finding the overall argument boldly
stated, the reader must hunt for it.
And yet the argument is both subtle and appealing. Chartier explains
that the old regimes of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI emerged out of a pe–
riod of nasty civil and religious strife, after which the population will–
ingly conceded new powers to the political and spiritual authorities in
return for security and order. By the eighteenth century, however, the
memory of strife had faded, while the new powers remained, chafing and
slowly alienating the French from traditional institutions. At the same
time (and here Chartier draws heavily on the early work of Jiirgen
Habermas), two important cultural shifts took place. First, the French
had traditionally conceived of French society as a single "great chain" of
corporate bodies under a divinely-ordained monarch, but now more and
more authors began to distinguish between the public domain of the
state and the realm of private individuals, with its domestic virtues of so–
briety, modesty, and fidelity .
Second, an expansion of literacy, coupled with an increase in the
circulation of books and periodicals, created a new arena for critical
public discussion , detached from traditional institutions, in which
all
be–
liefs, sacred and profane alike, came in for cool skeptical dissection.
In
this arena, it was precisely the new "private" domestic values that reigned
supreme, and in their light, the dissolute, ostentatious and corrupt royal
court appeared ugly and diseased. The splendor of the monarchy now
counted for less than the personal conduct of the monarch (and, in
Marie Antoinette's case, the monarch's wife). In fact, the language of
private virtue, articulated in the burgeoning press, as well as in the world
of salons and reading circles, gave powerful expression to the long-sim–
mering disaffection with the monarchy and Church and produced, by
1789, a lengthy and severe indictment of what would soon be called the
"old regime." Revolution had become, if not inevitable, then at least
"politically conceivable." As Dryden wrote, in lines that would make a
nice epigraph for Chartier (although their seventeenth-century origins
somewhat undermine his point about the novelty of the phenomenon),
"What weight of ancient witness can prevail! If private reason hold the
public scale?"
Chartier's close attention to the nuances of language and custom
produces a subtle account of the Revolution, perhaps the most com–
pelling account currently available. Yet is also evokes a nagging chorus of
doubts. First of all, his interpretation, attractive as it is, rests on thin evi–
dence. Unlike an anthropologist, Chartier cannot observe his subjects'
"cultural practices"
in situ.
He must tease them out of texts devoted to
