Shifting The Boundaries
Transformation of the Languages of Public and Private in the Eighteenth Century

A collection of essays, written by well-known specialists in their fields, which deal with the problematic and ever-shifting boundaries between the public and the private spheres in Western Europe in the eighteenth century. It examines and challenges the notion that there was a clear distinction between the emerging public sphere, which mediated between the State and individuals and provided a forum for Enlightenment debates, and the private, intimate or familial sphere.

The essays focus on political, legal, historiographic, literary and gender issues in an attempt to create a more subtle and differentiated view of how men and women established and understood various 'public 'and 'private' domains, and used the languages of public and private actions and sentiments.

Contributions by
Jonathan Barry, John Brewer, Dario Castiglione, M.C. Cook, Dena Goodman, Vivien Jones, John Christian Laursen, Maria Luisa Pesante, Mark Salber Phillips, Edoardo Tortarolo and Ursula Vogel

Contents: Preface, Dario Castiglione; preface, Lesley Sharpe; this, that and the other - public, social and private in the 17th and 18th centuries, John Brewer; regendering the republic of letters - private association in the public sphere, 1780-89, Dena Goodman; addressing the public in 18th-century French fiction, Malcolm Cook; scandalous femininity - prostitution and 18th-century narrative, Vivien Jones; the fear of public disorder - marriage between revolution and reaction, Ursula Vogel; Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel - argumentative strategies in the debate on the rights of women, Lesley Sharpe; literatures of publicity and the right to freedom of the press in late-18th-century Germany - the case of Karl Friedrich Bahrdt, John Christian Laursen; censorship and the conception of the public in late-18th-century Germany - or, are censorship and public opinion mutually exclusive?, Edoardo Tortarolo; opinion's metamorphosis - Hume and the perception of public authority, Dario Castiglione; an impartial actor - the private and the public sphere in Adam Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments", Maria Luisa Pesante; William Godwin and the idea of historical commemoration - history as public memory and private sentiment, Mark Salber Phillips; a historical postscript, Jonathan Barry.

DARIO CASTIGLIONE is Lecturer in Political Theory, University of Exeter. LESLEY SHARPE is Senior Lecturer in German, University of Exeter. Lesley Sharpe studied for her MA and Dphil at Oxford. She also spent time as a postdoctoral Hanseatic Fellow at the University of Hamburg. She taught for many years at the University of Exeter and was then appointed to the Chair of German at the University of Bristol. She returned to Exeter in 2003 to a new Chair of German. From 1994 to 2000 she was Germanic Editor of the Modern Language Review. She has served on the Arts and Humanities Research Board research panel for Modern Languages and was a member of the German, Dutch and Scandinavian panel for the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise. She is currently Chair of the national organization Women in German Studies.