Abstract

IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY it was axiomatic that literature, including history, should be both amusing and educational, pleasing as well as instructive' Today, as historians wrestle with the tough exigencies of their discipline, they rarely try to amuse; and yet there is at least one topic that continues to entertain lay readers: the salons of eighteenth-century Paris. But here the amusement seems to be devoid of instruction. As Maurice Agulhon has observed, the majority of historians have banished the salon to the province of la petite histoire, the anecdotal and trivial account of personalities and private adventures 3 When scholarship fails to assimilate what catches the public eye, it may be because the stories which have popular appeal have no conceivable meaning for the discussion of a society as a whole, its general structure and course of

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