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- Title
A Fantastic Frenzy of Consumption in Early Modern France.
- Authors
LLEWELLYN, KATHLEEN M.
- Abstract
The enthusiastic (even excessive) consumerism of contemporary western society has its roots, according to some, in the expansion of the consumption of goods in Renaissance Europe. Early modern men and women were ardent, even “passionate" consumers. Such self-indulgence was regarded as decadent and socially perilous; religious and other moral authorities of the era sought to eradicate or at least control these sins of excess. My study examines criticism of “crimes of consumption" in both serious and satirical French literature of the early modern era, including such pamphlets as Frenaizie fantastique Françoise Sur la Nouvelle Mode des Nouveaux Courtisans bottez de ce temps and Pasquil de la Cour pour apprendre à discourir et s'habiller à la mode. Scrutiny of these texts suggest that womens “crimes of consumption" tended to reveal who they “really were"—bad women, sinful women, dangerous women who led men into sin. Mens crimes of passionate consumption sometimes also revealed their sinful selves—some were seen as gluttons, for example. But mens consumption was also, at times, condemned as an attempt to appear to be what they were not; their display of acquired objects revealed an effort to claim membership in a social class to which they did not belong.
- Subjects
FRANCE; CONSUMPTION (Economics); MALE consumers; WOMEN consumers; PAMPHLETS; FRENCH satire; CONSUMPTION (Economics) -- Religious aspects; CONSUMER culture; ECONOMIC consumption &; ethics; HISTORY; CHRISTIANITY
- Publication
Renaissance & Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, 2015, Vol 38, Issue 3, p119
- ISSN
0034-429X
- Publication type
Essay
- DOI
10.33137/rr.v38i3.26151