Peter Gay, The Bourgeois Experience, Victoria to Frd, vol. II : The Tenr Passn, Oxford-New York, Oxford Universy Prs, 1986, 490 p. - Volume 42 Issue 3
Contents:
- THE BOURGEOIS EXPERIENCE: VICTORIA TO FRD, BY PETER GAY
- PETER GAY OBUARY
- PETER GAY, THE BOURGEOIS EXPERIENCE, VICTORIA TO FRD, VOL. II : THE TENR PASSN, OXFORD-NEW YORK, OXFORD UNIVERSY PRS, 1986, 490 P.
THE BOURGEOIS EXPERIENCE: VICTORIA TO FRD, BY PETER GAY
Sex and Society The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Frd. Volume I: Edutn of the Sens. by Peter Gay. Oxford Universy Prs. 534 pp. $25.00. We are * peter gay bourgeois *
By Peter Gay.
Peter Gay is an amb and unually wi-rangg historian of culture, and no one n fail to admire the dtry wh which he seeks knowledge and his zt munitg .
”1 Profsor Gay has an engagg manner and a sharp eye for a tellg quotatn and a choice example. What she was not (as Gay claims) was a bourgeoise: no bourgeoise ever ate breakfast off solid ’s e of Frd also seems to me misleadg.
PETER GAY OBUARY
Rudolph Bn; Peter Gay. The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Frd. Volume 1, Edutn of the Sens. New York: Oxford Universy Prs. 1984. Pp. 534. $25 * peter gay bourgeois *
Then, due urse, was seismic; but is largely irrelevant terms of Gay’s perd. Gay appears to be a more or ls orthodox Frdian, and that is a disadvantage to a historian now that most of have e to see Frd not as a scientist but as an imagative wrer, if an origal and illumatg one.
PETER GAY, THE BOURGEOIS EXPERIENCE, VICTORIA TO FRD, VOL. II : THE TENR PASSN, OXFORD-NEW YORK, OXFORD UNIVERSY PRS, 1986, 490 P.
* peter gay bourgeois *
Gay is not so foolish as to buy the full psychobgraphy and psychohistory package, but I shudr when he tells his purpose is “to tegrate psychoanalysis wh history. Gay, ed, is obssed wh Frd, who pops up his text persistently and ngoly. Th, discsg Mary Wood-Allen’s book on what to tell children about sex, Gay nnot help notg: “Sigmund Frd tensely disliked this kd of equivotn.
Gladstone had eight children fourteen years, Gay feels bound to add: “The Frds had six children eight years. ”_____________But a more fundamental objectn to Gay’s amework is his e of the word “bourgeois” to characterize his perd. Gay himself adms and dismiss at length problems of fn, ncedg that some historians argue that the realy of bourgeois power the 19th century has been much exaggerated.
The Atrian empire was ls homogeneo, but all sentials urt and aristocracy retaed their power until the Hapsburgs left their throne: bourgeois polics was for lol and ocsnally regnal was a more plex se.
The fourth volume Gay's seri on 19th-century bourgeois culture (The Tenr Passn, 1986, etc.): readable and telligent, though batable s methodology. Seekg to prove that ``the neteenth century was tensely preoccupied wh the self,'' the thor looks at faiar material provotive new ways whout ever providg the earth-shakg sights he seems to thk he's garnered. Although he claims to al ``maly wh ordary bourgeois,'' Gay (History/Yale) vot only a sgle chapter to the wrgs of nonfamo Victorians. Otherwise, his sectns on mic, Romanticism, tobgraphy, bgraphy and history, fictn, and patg all draw on such well- known figur as Shelley, Coleridge, Goethe, Michelet, and Victor Hugo. Gay mak a good se for his argument that the Victorians, though they did not vent the art of trospectn, mocratized by makg lerary exampl available on a wi basis (thanks to the spread of leracy and cheaper accs to books). He mak a slightly ls pellg se that the ele's view of the arts as means of self-exprsn spread to the middle class durg this perd. Moment to moment, his analysis is unfailgly trigug, as he dissects the Romantics' polil narcissism, discs how much tth tobgraphi nta, and exam 19th-century historians' search for a able past. But his oft-repeated central pot, that ``at the heart of Victorian bourgeois culture . . . self-ncealment and self-revelatn stggled for supremacy,'' seems so evint as to hardly require the amount of explitn he giv ; the disappotgly shallow sectn on novels siarly reerat the obv. A lot of ser thought don't que hang together here, a problem highlighted by the fact that the book's only summg-up occurs four paragraphs tacked onto the end of the chapter on diari and letters. Stimulatg, but not nearly as good as should be. (photos, not seen) * peter gay bourgeois *
Gay’s notn of the “bourgeois century” do not f the facts of 19th-century Bra.
Gay quot Hee as an exriator of bourgeois cultural valu. _____________In short, the amework of Gay’s book lacks accurate fn and, above all, chronologil precisn.
Gay’s method of wrg history mak large claims.
The Cultivatn of Hatred (Bourgeois Experience): 9780393033984: Gay, Peter: Books * peter gay bourgeois *
Gay follows this unsatisfactory method. I strs the fects of Gay’s methodology bee the taxonomy and prentatn of evince are even more cril than ual when the subject is as elive as sexual behavr. Gay’s book suggts that is not possible, at any rate at prent, to characterize 19th-century sexualy wh any precisn, and certaly not to give a “bourgeois” label.
Gay’s material shows there are exceptns to any and all generalizatns.
And, pace Peter Gay, that is about the only generalizatn is safe to make. Peter Gay, who has died aged 91, was one of Ameri’s leadg historians, known particularly for his work on morn European cultural and tellectual history. The first volume, subtled The Rise of Morn Paganism, was wily acclaimed far beyond the amic world, and won the Natnal Book award the first volume, subtled The Rise of Morn Pagansim, of Peter Gay’s massive study, was wily acclaimed far beyond the amic world In his encyclopedic The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Frd (five volum between 1984 and 1998), Gay explored wonrfully readable prose a wi range of aspects of the European – pecially the Brish, French and German – and the North Amerin middle class their heyday.