Evening's Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe

by Craig Koslofsky

• ISBN13: 9780521896436
• ISBN10: 0521896436
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781107299658
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-08-15
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

What does it mean to write a history of the night? Evening's Empire is a fascinating guide to the myriad ways in which early modern people understood, experienced, and transformed the night. Using diaries, letters and legal records together with representations of the night in early modern religion, literature and art, Craig Koslofsky opens up an entirely new vista on early modern Europe. He shows how princes, courtiers, burghers and common people 'nocturnalized' political expression, the public sphere and the use of daily time. Fear of the night was now mingled with improved opportunities for labour and leisure: the modern night was beginning to assume its characteristic shape. Evening's Empire takes the evocative history of the night into early modern politics, culture and society, revealing its importance to key themes from witchcraft, piety, gender and the public sphere to colonization, race and the Enlightenment.

Author Biography

Craig Koslofsky is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His previous publications include the Reformation of the Dead: Death and Ritual in Early Modern Germany (2001).

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. ix
List of maps	p. xiii
Acknowledgments	p. xiv
An early modern revolution	p. 1
An early modern revolution	p. 2
Taking stock	p. 5
Darkness and the Devil, 1450ù1650	p. 19
The "Wittenberg Nightingale"	p. 19
Instruments of darkness	p. 23
Witchcraft	p. 28
Seeking the Lord in the night, 1530-1650	p. 46
Discovering the night	p. 46
Seeking the Lord in the night	p. 47
Thinking with the night about God	p. 73
A refuge in the night	p. 88
Princes of darkness: the night at court, 1600ù1750	p. 91
Nocturnal spectacles and pleasures	p. 93
Darkness and the perspective stage	p. 103
The nocturnalization of daily life at court	p. 110
Princes of darkness	p. 118
"An entirely new contrivance": the rise of street lighting, 1660-1700	p. 128
Lighting the streets of early modern Europe	p. 131
Policing the night: street lighting in Lille	p. 140
Absolutism and street lighting in Leipzig	p. 145
Resistance by local authorities	p. 151
Spectacle, security, and sociability	p. 155
Colonizing the urban night: resistance, gender, and the public sphere	p. 157
Hand grenades, horsewhips, and the civilizing process	p. 159
Resistance	p. 162
Gender and the public sphere	p. 174
Colonizing the rural night?	p. 198
Patterns	p. 200
Colonizing the rural night?	p. 218
Country folk, city nights: daily time diverges in the eighteenth century	p. 228
Darkness and Enlightenment	p. 236
Ghosts	p. 238
Witches	p. 247
Hell	p. 252
Darkness and Enlightenment	p. 258
Darkness and race in the early Enlightenment	p. 268
Conclusion	p. 276
Notes	p. 283
Bibliography	p. 372
Index	p. 424
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