Toward the end of the eighteenth century, a radical change occurred in notions of self and personal identity. This was a sudden transformation, says Dror Wahrman, and nothing short of a revolution in the understanding of selfhood and of identity categories including race, gender, and class. In this pathbreaking book, he offers a fundamentally new interpretation of this critical turning point in Western history. Wahrman demonstrates this transformation with a fascinating variety of cultural evidence from eighteenth-century England, from theatre to beekeeping, fashion to philosophy, art to travel and translations of the classics. He discusses notions of self in the earlier 1700s - what he terms the 'ancien regime of identity' - that seem bizarre, even incomprehensible, to present-day readers. He then examines how this peculiar world came to an abrupt end, and the far-reaching consequences of that change. This unrecognised cultural revolution, the author argues, set the scene for the array of new departures that signaled the onset of Western modernity.
- ISBN10 0300102518
- ISBN13 9780300102512
- Publish Date 11 July 2004
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 24 November 2016
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Yale University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 416
- Language English