The Purchase of the Past The Purchase of the Past

The Purchase of the Past

Collecting Culture in Post-Revolutionary Paris c.1790–1890

    • €144.99
    • €144.99

Publisher Description

Offering a broad and vivid survey of the culture of collecting from the French Revolution to the Belle Époque, The Purchase of the Past explores how material things became a central means of accessing and imagining the past in nineteenth-century France. By subverting the monarchical establishment, the French Revolution not only heralded the dawn of the museum age, it also threw an unprecedented quantity of artworks into commercial circulation, allowing private individuals to pose as custodians and saviours of the endangered cultural inheritance. Through their common itineraries, erudition and sociability, an early generation of scavengers established their own form of 'private patrimony', independent from state control. Over a century of Parisian history, Tom Stammers explores collectors' investments – not just financial but also emotional and imaginative – in historical artefacts, as well as their uncomfortable relationship with public institutions. In so doing, he argues that private collections were a critical site for salvaging and interpreting the past in a post-revolutionary society, accelerating but also complicating the development of a shared national heritage.

GENRE
History
RELEASED
2020
25 June
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
678
Pages
PUBLISHER
Cambridge University Press
SIZE
26.1
MB

More Books Like This

Consuming the Past Consuming the Past
2018
A Cultural History of Objects in the Renaissance A Cultural History of Objects in the Renaissance
2022
Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760–1850 Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760–1850
2013
Knowledge and the Early Modern City Knowledge and the Early Modern City
2019
Provence and the British Imagination Provence and the British Imagination
2016
Routledge Revivals: Medieval France (1995) Routledge Revivals: Medieval France (1995)
2017

More Books by Tom Stammers

An Analysis of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners An Analysis of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners
2017
An Analysis of Georges Lefebvre's The Coming of the French Revolution An Analysis of Georges Lefebvre's The Coming of the French Revolution
2017
An Analysis of Richard J. Evans's In Defence of History An Analysis of Richard J. Evans's In Defence of History
2017
An Analysis of Eric Hobsbawm's The Age Of Revolution An Analysis of Eric Hobsbawm's The Age Of Revolution
2017
An Analysis of Christopher R. Browning's Ordinary Men An Analysis of Christopher R. Browning's Ordinary Men
2017