European Weather History: The Bourgeois Era - Illustrated Edition

Author: Edward Fox (Germany), translated by Zhao Yongmu / Xu Hongzhi
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2000-10-01
Features: The content and scope of this volume focus on analyzing the sexual lives of different classes during the era of bourgeois rule and their reflections in ideology. The documentary materials related to this topic are extremely rich and far more diverse than what a historian could use to demonstrate sexual customs of previous eras. Because each class now has its own independent political life, each class expresses its views and demands on sexual morality in its own way. Moreover, the possibility of each class articulating its views and demands is almost equal, with the primary means being regular publications. Newspapers everywhere occupy the position of what is known as "flying pamphlets." Illustrations became a rapidly and very successfully integrated part of newspapers, initially appearing as separate supplements and later evolving into comments, supplements, and displays accompanying the text. Eventually, illustrations became more important than text in many cases, with text serving primarily to guide the reader's intent. One of the main tasks of the illustrations in this volume is to provide a proper understanding of the growth of these rich documentary materials. However, we can only limit ourselves to a relatively minor task and provide a roughly accurate understanding. Due to the vast scale of capitalism, the bourgeois era can be divided into millions of reflections, making it impossible to capture even a part of them, just as an individual can only grasp the individual manifestations of a colorful life and its issues, rather than its entirety. Elevating a selected part from the entire picture to the level of typical discourse and recreating the mainstream of private capitalist culture—this is something that only individual historians can achieve today.