Description
Book SynopsisIsabel V. Hull analyzes the shift in the "sexual system" which occurred in German-speaking Central Europe when the absolutist state relinquished its monopoly on public life and presided over the formation of an independent civil society. Hull defines a society's sexual system as the patterned way in which sexual behavior is shaped and given meaning through institutions.
Trade ReviewAn unusually creative and important book, its argument is built on research remarkable in breadth and depth and its implications radiate from the focus on sexuality to a great variety of related themes.... Sexuality, State, and Civil Society invites skepticism about itself precisely because its author brings such a powerful historical imagination to her subject. It is a book to be welcomed, appreciated, and pondered.
* Journal of Modern History *
Hull analyzes the evolving bureaucratic understanding of heterosexuality during the transition from absolutist moral regulation of sexual practices for the public good to the formation of a bourgeois civil society of privacy and property.... She offers a remarkable look at the sexual dimension of the liberal social contract and at those whose sexual liberty was assured thereby.
* Choice *
With great intellectual energy and resourcefulness, Hull has placed a new set of issues on our scholarly agenda. After reading Sexuality, State, and Civil Society in Germany, 1700–1815, no one will view this period in quite the same way again.
* Times Literary Supplement *
