THE SWEDISH ARISTOCRACY AND THE FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT CIRCA 1740–1780

During the second half of the 18th century, Sweden had important political and cultural contacts with France. The aristocracy, which had a central role in Swedish politics during the Age of Liberty, showed an active interest in the French Enlightenment. This article examines the meaning of radical philosophy in the context of court society. It focuses on the Swedish diplomats in Paris as an example of a learned elite for which philosophy was not so much a way to transform society as an alternative form of intellectual satisfaction.     

OPÉRA-COMIQUE,CULTURAL POLITICS AND IDENTITY IN SCANDINAVIA 1760–1800

As a contribution to the history of public life and cultural practice, this article examines the political and social implications of the fondness for French comic opera in Scandinavia between 1760 and 1800. The urban elites’ interest in opéra-comique is examined as a part of the self-fashioning processes of mimetism and distinction, but also as a way to consolidate the community. Opéra-comique was promoted by the literary and diplomatic elites. It became important for the cultural politics of the Scandinavian monarchies as well as for intellectual milieus able to propose alternative models for life in society. The appropriation of opéra-comique by an expanding public transformed the nature of the supposedly aristocratic and cosmopolitan genre, which became an element in the defining of new bourgeois and patriotic identities. With a cross-disciplinary and transnational perspective on eighteenth-century Northern Europe, the article underscores the links between politics, patronage and literary sociability, and shows that opera and music, in eighteenth-century Scandinavia, were much more than artistic issues.