Cultural Capitals:
Early Modern London and Paris
Karen Newman

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ADDITIONAL ENDORSEMENTS:

"Written with ease and panache, Cultural Capitals is an archivist's tale of two cities. As the double entendre of the title indicates, the book also deals with circulation of goods, commodities, and even, in a psychogeographical sense, drives and desires. It reaps rewards for students on both sides of the Channel and, furthermore, for amateurs of the classical age, describes the orders and odors of life as it was lived in the streets and urban byways, a world today too often overshadowed by the pomp of Versailles or the Restoration."--Tom Conley, Harvard University

"This is an original, wide-ranging, genuinely interdisciplinary study of seventeenth-century culture in two cities, Paris and London. Newman's reading for the project is massive, up to date, and impressive--philosophies of space, economic theory, materialist histories, and epistemologies of city life. She centers each chapter on her own analyses of literary texts and also of semiliterary genres such as maps, traveler's memo books, travel guides, and urban monuments. A learned, lively book."--Ann R. Jones, Smith College

"This is an exciting new approach to cultural history, from an established and highly regarded scholar. The book focuses on London and Paris, the two largest, most diverse, and most culturally vibrant cities of northern Europe in the early modern period. The book is rich in quotation. The writing is fluent and elegant."--Vanessa Harding, author of The Dead and the Living in Paris and London, 1500-1670

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File created: 11/5/2009

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