Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Gay, Peter - John Grigg (review date 20 June 1998)

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John Grigg (review date 20 June 1998)

SOURCE: Grigg, John. “A Class Performance.” Spectator 280, no. 8863 (20 June 1998): 32–33.

[In the following review, Grigg offers a mixed assessment of The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, Volume V: Pleasure Wars.]

There are few sillier notions than that the bourgeoisie is a bastion of philistinism and the supreme obstacle to human progress. Anyone who looks at the evidence can see that the idea is absurd. The word bourgeois is linked, etymologically, with the words city and civilisation, and it is no coincidence that in modern times the advance of humanity has owed far more to the middling sort of people—citizens—than to monarchs, patricians or proletarians. Of course many bourgeois are philistine and resistant to change, because originality and innovation will always be largely confined to an elite. But for at least two centuries the bourgeoisie has been the dynamic element in...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. John Weightman (review date 12 January 1967)
   2. J. H. Plumb (review date 13 January 1967)
   3. Peter Jacobsohn (review date 4 January 1969)
   4. Richard Hanser (review date 17 February 1969)
   5. Elizabeth Wiskemann (review date 23 May 1969)
   6. Corinna Adam (review date 6 June 1969)
   7. C. B. A. Behrens (review date 18 December 1969)
   8. John Raymond (review date 24 April 1970)
   9. J. H. Plumb (review date 2 May 1970)
   10. K. M. Baker (review date June 1970)
   11. Joseph R. Strayer (review date 20 June 1970)
   12. James Sloan Allen (review date 17 January 1977)
   13. Richard Wollheim (review date October 1977)
   14. George L. Mosse (review date 26 November 1977)
   15. Robert Alter (essay date March 1978)
   16. James Fenton (review date 19 May 1978)
   17. Robert S. Rosen (review date 5 June 1978)
   18. David Cannadine (review date 2 February 1984)
   19. Paul Robinson (review date 6 February 1984)
   20. Charles Solomon (review date 26 February 1984)
   21. Phoebe Pettingell (review date 5 March 1984)
   22. Paul Johnson (review date June 1984)
   23. Anthony Storr (review date 8 March 1986)
   24. Anthony Storr (review date 14 June 1986)
   25. Noel Annan (review date 20 November 1986)
   26. Philip Pomper (review date summer 1987)
   27. Philip Pomper (review date winter 1988)
   28. Antony Copley (review date February 1988)
   29. Wilfred M. McClay (review date March 1988)
   30. P. E. H. Hair (review date April 1988)
   31. Eugene Kennedy (review date 10 April 1988)
   32. Howard L. Kaye (review date May 1988)
   33. Peter J. Swales (review date 8 May 1988)
   34. William J. McGrath (review date 18 August 1988)
   35. Samuel B. Thielman (review date 29 September 1988)
   36. Anthony Storr (review date 1989)
   37. Benjamin Goodnick (essay date winter 1989)
   38. Thomas H. Thompson (review date March 1989)
   39. Steven Weiland (review date spring 1989)
   40. Thomas T. Lewis (review date May–June 1989)
   41. Edith Kurzweil (review date summer 1989)
   42. Sam B. Girgus (essay date June 1991)
   43. Eugene Taylor (review date 1 June 1991)
   44. John E. Toews (essay date September 1991)
   45. Richard Sennett (review date 7 November 1993)
   46. Forrest McDonald (review date 15 November 1993)
   47. Noel Annan (review date 13 January 1994)
   48. Roy Porter (review date 22 April 1994)
   49. Tom Taylor (review date autumn 1994)
   50. Paul Smith (review date 9 February 1995)
   51. Richard Jenkyns (review date 30 November 1995)
   52. Rudolph Binion (review date winter 1996)
   53. Boyd Gibson (review date 25 September 1996)
   54. Timothy Lang (review date autumn 1996)
   55. Michael D. Pratt (review date winter 1997)
   56. Philip Hensher (review date 17 May 1997)
   57. Nina Auerbach (review date spring 1998)
   58. Diana Schaub (review date June 1998)
   59. John Grigg (review date 20 June 1998)
   60. Gordon A. Craig (review date 13 August 1998)
   61. Amy E. Schwartz (review date autumn 1998)
   62. Alvin H. Rosenfeld (review date 30 November 1998)
   63. Heinz R. Kuehn (review date summer 1999)
   64. Howard L. Kaye (review date July–August 1999)
   65. Anja Amsel (review date July–September 1999)
   66. Edith Kurzweil (review date 1 August 1999)
   67. Robert Winder (review date 18 October 1999)
   68. Jason Cowley (review date 24 January 2000)
   69. Johan Ahr (review date February 2000)
   70. Joseph Kerman (review date 23 March 2000)
   71. Doris L. Berger (review date spring 2000)
   72. Noah Isenberg (review date spring–summer 2000)
   73. Edgar Feuchtwanger (review date autumn 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright