ENLIGHTENMENT IDEAS SPREAD

I. Challenge of New Ideas

a. All level of societies began reading about new ideas from enlightenment

b. Began to see need for reform and creation of just society

i. Ensure material well being, social justice, happiness

c. Censorship

i. Government and church respond with censoring material

ii. Book bans, burnings, imprisonment of writers

iii. Writers use fiction to avoid censorship

1. Voltaire wrote Candide to expose problems in society

II. Salons

a. Salons – informal social gatherings to exchange ideas

b. Salonieres – (a woman who hosted the salon) middle class could meet with nobles as equals and discuss ideas

c. Women played significant role in getting thinkers together

III. Enlightened despots

a. Absolute rulers who used power to bring social & political change

b. Frederick the Great – 1740-1786 - Prussia

i. Had Voltaire set up and Academy of Science

ii. Drained swamps to grow potatoes

iii. Gave seed and tools to peasants whose land ruined by war

iv. Allowed freedom of religion

v. Strengthend bureaucracy and simplified laws

c. Catherine the Great – Russia

i. Wrote to Voltaire and Diderot

ii. Gave nobles a charter of rights and spoke against serfdom

iii. Wouldn’t give up her power – expanded her empire

d. Joseph II – Hapsburg - Austria

i. Traveled in disguise among people to hear what they thought

ii. Reformed government

1. picked talented middle class instead of nobles for government

iii. Allowed religious freedom and no censorship

IV. Arts and Literature

a. Courtly art

i. Baroque – classic Greek and Roman grand tradition – favored by Louis XIV

1. Huge and showed historic battles and lives of saints

ii. Rococo – style of architecture – personal refined, elegant

b. Middle Class art

i. Wanted realistic pictures without frills

ii. Rembrandt catered to them

c. Music

i. Ballets and operas were developed during this time

ii. Bach –

1. complex religious pieces for organ

iii. Handel –

1. Water Music, Messiah

iv. Mozart –

1. began at 6 died at 35 – tremendous musical production

d. Novel

i. Middle class want stories about self told in plain language

ii. Robinson Crusoe – shipwrecked, but using wits and a native is able to survive

V. Lives of the Majority

a. Most people were peasants and not influenced by movement

b. Conditions west and east

i. West more prosperous, serfdom disappeared

1. some work own land, others rent it, others work as day laborers

2. still had to do free labor to repair roads, bridges, lords could hunt foxes on their land

ii. east – serfdom remain – were bound to land, could be bought and sold, government could take them