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The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville

The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville

The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville

Cheryl B. Welch, Simmons College, Boston
October 2006
Available
Paperback
9780521549967

    The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville contains a set of critical interpretive essays by internationally renowned scholars on the work of Alexis de Tocqueville. The essays cover Tocqueville's major themes (liberty, equality, democracy, despotism, civil society, religion) and texts (Democracy in America, Recollections, Old Regime and the Revolution, other important reports, speeches and letters). The authors analyze both Tocqueville's contributions as a theorist of modern democracy and his craft as a writer. Collections of secondary work on Tocqueville have tended to fall into camps, either bringing together only scholars from one point of view or discipline, or treating only one major text. This Companion transcends national, ideological, disciplinary, and textual boundaries to bring together the best in recent Tocqueville scholarship. The essays not only introduce Tocqueville's major themes and texts, but also put forward provocative arguments that advance the field of Tocqueville studies.

    • The introduction analyzes Tocqueville's place in twenty-first century intellectual debates
    • Brings together both American and French scholars of Tocqueville
    • Contains essays on all of Tocqueville's major texts

    Product details

    October 2006
    Paperback
    9780521549967
    460 pages
    228 × 151 × 26 mm
    0.627kg
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • Part I. Theory:
    • 1. Tocqueville's comparative perspectives Seymour Drescher
    • 2. Tocqueville on 1789: preconditions, precipitants, and triggers Jon Elster
    • 3. Tocqueville's new political science Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop
    • 4. Tocqueville, political philosopher Pierre Manent
    • Part II. Texts:
    • 5. Tocqueville's Democracy in America reconsidered James T. Schleifer
    • 6. Translating Tocqueville: the constraints of classicism Arthur Goldhammer
    • 7. The writer Engagé: Tocqueville and political rhetoric Laurence Guellec
    • 8. The shifting puzzles of Tocqueville's The Old Regime and the Revolution Robert T. Gannett Jr.
    • Part III. Themes:
    • 9. Tocqueville and civil society Dana Villa
    • 10. Tocqueville on threats to liberty in democracies Melvin Richter
    • 11. Tocqueville and democratic religious experience Joshua Mitchell
    • 12. Tocqueville on fraternity and fratricide Cheryl B. Welch
    • Part IV. Two Traditions:
    • 13. Tocqueville and the French Françoise Mélonio
    • 14. Tocqueville and the Americans: Democracy in America as read in nineteenth-century America Olivier Zunz.
      Contributors
    • Seymour Drescher, Jon Elster, Harvey C. Mansfield, Delba Winthrop, Pierre Manent, James T. Schleifer, Arthur Goldhammer, Laurence Guellec, Robert T. Gannett Jr., Dana Villa, Melvin Richter, Joshua Mitchell, Cheryl B. Welch, Françoise Mélonio, Olivier Zunz

    • Editor
    • Cheryl B. Welch , Simmons College, Boston

      Cheryl Welch received her MA and PhD from Columbia University. She is the author of Liberty and Utility: The French Idéologues and the Transformation of Liberalism and De Tocqueville and editor of Critical Issues in Social Thought with Murray Milgate. She has also written numerous articles in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Political Theory, History of Political Thought, and History of European Ideas. She has received research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation, and has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, at Harvard Law School, and at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government.