Local color in post-enlightenment culture
Part of : Balkan studies : biannual publication of the Institute for Balkan Studies ; Vol.40, No.1, 1999, pages 91-116
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91-116
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France, the heartland of the Enlightenment, was also home to pathbreaking thinkers who sought alternatives to the philosophes’ project of universalizing rationalism and “top-down” civilizing, radiating out from Paris to the rest of Europe. One of the most influential, wide-ranging scholars to forge a post-Enlightenment synthesis was Claude Fauriel, whose contributions include the publication of Europe’s first full-scale, scholarly collection ofmodern Greek folk songs (1824-1825). In that collection Fauriel showed how a Romantic appreciation of local color and cosmopolitan diversity could be combined with an Enlightenment espousal of secular education, rational government, and political liberty. Through the past two centuries, French cultural and political spokesmen have continued to grapple with those post-Enlightenment issues and the divergent legacies of FaurieTs era. In a mutating variety of ways, French regionalists and some French national leaders have worked to defend and to promote heterogeneous cultural life within France, Europe, and the world.
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Enlightenment culture
