Salons [ Associational culture ]
… (57). As Keith Baker has shown, Lespinasse’s salon functioned as an ‘antechamber’ to the French Academy, where the philosophes could strategically select candidates and campaign for their election; indeed, from 1767 to 1776, eight philosophes were elected to the French Academy, all regular attendees of Lespinasse’s salon whom d’Alembert had groomed. … The salons, in fact, could not have existed without both the aristocrats, with access to power and prestige, and the philosophes , who were defining the intellectual agenda of the Enlightenment. Some salons failed precisely because they …
Enlightenment | France | Gaming | Networks | Patronage
Encyclopedia