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Bored witless in her south Delhi cocoon, the beautiful Ania Khurana seeks excitement. Whether tinkering with her novel-in-progress or setting up her single aunt and close friends with suitable men, she undertakes her projects with a passionate focus. Art fairs, literary residencies, a weekend at a cricketer-turned-politician's country retreat and, of course, dozens of glittering parties-Ania applies her exceptional industry to them all. But her privilege cannot mask the darkness and vulnerability at the heart of her ornate world-nor does it enable her to influence the dazzling, deadly men and women who appear in it. Keenly observed, sharply plotted and full of wit and brio, Polite Society reimagines Jane Austen's Emma in contemporary Delhi to portray a society whose polished surface often reveals far more than is intended.
Women are shown to have played an important and very visible role in society at the time. Fashionable "polite" society of this period emphasised mixed-gender sociability and encouraged the visible participation of elite women in a series of urban, often public settings. Using a variety of sources (both men's and women's correspondence, accounts, bills, memoirs and other family papers), this book investigates the ways in which polite social practices and expectations influenced the experience of elite femininity in Scotland in the eighteenth century. It explores women's education and upbringing; their reading practices; the meanings of the social spaces and activities in which they engaged and how this fed over into the realm of politics; and the fashion for tourism at home and abroad. It also asks how elite women used polite social spaces and practices to extend their mental horizons and to form a sense of belonging to a public at a time when Scotland was among the most intellectually vibrant societies in Europe.
This book presents an account of masculinity in eighteenth century Britain. In particular it is concerned with the impact of an emergent polite society on notions of manliness and the gentleman. From the 1660s a new type of social behaviour, politeness, was promoted by diverse writers. Based on continental ideas of refinement, it stressed the merits of genuine and generous sociability as befitted a progressive and tolerant nation. Early eighteenth century writers encouraged men to acquire the characteristics of politeness by becoming urbane town gentlemen. Later commentators promoted an alternative culture of sensibility typified by the man of feeling. Central to both was the need to spend more time with women, now seen as key agents of refinement. The relationship demanded a reworking of what it meant to be manly. Being manly and polite was a difficult balancing act. Refined manliness presented new problems for eighteenth century men. What was the relationship between politeness and duplicity? Were feminine actions such as tears and physical delicacy acceptable or not? Critics believed polite society led to effeminacy, not manliness, and condemned this failure of male identity with reference to the fop. This book reveals the significance of social over sexual conduct for eighteenth century definitions of masculinity. It shows how features traditionally associated with nineteenth century models were well established in the earlier figure of the polite town-dweller or sentimental man of feeling. Using personal stories and diverse public statements drawn from conduct books, magazines, sermons and novels, this is a vivid account of the changing status of men and masculinity as Britain moved into the modern period.
In preparing a book of etiquette for ladies, I would lay down as the first rule, "Do unto others as you would others should do to you." You can never be rude if you bear the rule always in mind, for what lady likes to be treated rudely? True Christian politeness will always be the result of an unselfish regard for the feelings of others, and though you may err in the ceremonious points of etiquette, you will never be impolite. Politeness, founded upon such a rule, becomes the expression, in graceful manner, of social virtues. The spirit of politeness consists in a certain attention to forms and ceremonies, which are meant both to please others and ourselves, and to make others pleased with us; a still clearer definition may be given by saying that politeness is goodness of heart put into daily practice; there can be no _true_ politeness without kindness, purity, singleness of heart, and sensibility.
Traditional accounts of the scientific revolution focus on such thinkers as Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, and usually portray it as a process of steady, rational progress. There is another side to this story, and its protagonists are more likely to be women than men, dilettante aristocrats than highly educated natural philosophers. The setting is not the laboratory, but rather the literary salons of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, and the action takes place sometime between Europe's last great witch hunts and the emergence of the modern world.Science for a Polite Society is an intriguing reexamination of the social, cultural, and intellectual context of the origins of modern science. The elite of French society accepted science largely because of their personal involvement and fascination with the emerging philosophy of nature. Members of salon society, especially women, were avid readers of works of natural philosophy and active participants in experiments for the edification of their peers. Some of these women went on to champion the new science and played a significant role in securing its acceptance by polite society.As Geoffrey Sutton points out, the sheer entertainment value of startling displays of electricity and chemical explosions would have played an important role in persuading the skeptical. We can only imagine the effects of such drawing-room experiments on an audience that lived in a world illuminated by tallow candles. For many, leaping electrical arcs and window-rattling detonations must have been as convincing as Newton's mathematically elegant description of the motions of the planets.With the acceptance and triumph of the new science came a prestige that made it a model of what rationality should be. The Enlightenment adopted the methods of scientific thought as the model for human progress. To be an ?enlightened? thinker meant believing that the application of scientific methods could reform political and economic life, to the lasting benefit of humanity. We live with the ambiguous results of that legacy even today, although in our own century we are perhaps more impressed by the ability of science to frighten, rather than to awe and entertain.
Parks and gardens in eighteenth-century England are usually seen as works of art created by individual geniuses like William Kent, Capability Brown and Humphry Repton. But this narrow view wasn't necessarily shared by contemporaries, and Tom Williamson in this thought-provoking book reveals that the aristocracy and gentry, who paid for these private landscapes and lived in them, were motivated by more complex interests and needs. Landowners had strong ideas of their own about how their property should look and how it should function. The park and garden were part of a working estate consisting of farms and forestry enterprises, and the surroundings of the country house were shaped to suit the requirements of hunting, shooting, riding and other recreational activities as well as to conform to the aesthetic principles of philosophers and landscape gardeners. Tom Williamson's pioneering study concentrates on the wider social, economic and political implications of these elaborate private landscapes. He emphasizes the practical relationship between the landowners who were demanding customers and the designers who were businessmen as well as artists. In the process he shows how changing fashions in the layout of gentlemen's pleasure grounds were related to broader currents of social and economic development in eighteenth-century England.
The book is a compilations of lectures by American author and abolitionist Julie Ward Howe, famous for writing the famous "Battle Hymn of the Republic". The lecture series, "Is Polite Society Polite?" was written for a course of lectures given some years ago by the New England Women's Club of Boston. "Greece Revisited" was first read before the Town and Country Club of Newport, R.I. "Aristophanes" and "Dante and Beatrice" were written for the Summer School of Philosophy at Concord, Mass. "The Halfness of Nature" was first read before the Boston Radical Club. "The Salon in America" was written for the Contemporary Club in Philadelphia.
Utopia has been achieved. For centuries, disease, hunger, poverty and war have been things found only in the histories. And applied genetics has given men and women the bodies of athletes and a lifespan of over a century. They should all have been very happy.... But Hamilton Felix is bored. And he is the culmination of a star line; each of his last thirty ancestors chosen for superior genes. Hamilton is, as far as genetics can produce one, the ultimate man. And this ultimate man can see no reason why the human race should survive, and has no intention of continuing the pointless comedy. However, Hamilton's life is about to become less boring. A secret cabal of revolutionaries who find utopia not just boring, but desperately in need of leaders who know just What Needs to be Done, are planning to revolt and put themselves in charge. Knowing of Hamilton's disenchantment with the modern world, they have recruited him to join their Glorious Revolution. Big mistake! The revolutionaries are about to find out that recruiting a superman is definitely not a good idea.... With an all new afterword by Tony Daniel. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).