Title: The Dissemination of Knowledge of the World from The Connoisseur to Evelina
Abstract: From the beginning, the meaning and cultural authority of "knowledge of the world" depended on a contextualized chain of significations, linking the acquisition of literacy to the time-honored codes of aristocratic behavior. To represent one's knowledge, whatever its content, as data acquired through direct experience of the world was to demonstrate one's immersion in the affairs of men—the province of gentlemen, in one form or another, since the Middle Ages; to the extent that knowledge of the world identified those who possessed it with a ruling class, this process of figuration was an act of political empowerment. It was, initially, a way of playing the aristocrat, of borrowing from him the rhetorical gestures for which he was known. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, a semiotic and political evolution was underway that would eventually enable men without blood and title to seize these signs and symbols of political power. By then, knowledge of the world had entered the stage of development in the life of a figure of speech where its meaning undergoes naturalization. Overused to the point of exhaustion, the figure began to function as a synonym for worldliness.KeywordsMarriage MarketPopular PressLiterary TraditionManor HouseWrong KindThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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