PETER GAYThe Naked HeartThe Bourgeois ExperienceVictoria to Freud The Naked Heart is the fourth volume in The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, Peter Gay's magisterial and searching inquiry into the ideas and sensibilities that dominated nineteenth-century culture. In The Naked Heart, Peter Gay explores the bourgeoisie's turn inward. At the very time that industrialists, inventors, statesmen, and natural scientists were conquering new objective worlds, Gay writes, "the secret life of the self had grown into a favorite and wholly serious indoor sport." Following the middle class's preoccupation with inwardness through its varied cultural expressions (such as fiction, art, history, and autobiography), Gay turns also to the letters and confessional diaries of both obscure and prominent men and women. These revealing documents help to round out a sparkling portrait of an age. "The multitude of case histories [Peter Gay] offers constitutes much of the pleasure of reading his work. . . . The 19th century conflicts between instinct and civilization are here as fully examined as anybody could wish."--Frank Kermode, New York Times Book Review "[Gay's] prose is clear, direct, and forceful; he is a fascinating guide to `the great voyage to the interior.' "--Stanislao G. Pugliese, Philadelphia Inquirer Peter Gay is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University. In addition to the Bourgeois Experience series, he is the author of The Enlightenment and the best-selling Freud: A Life for Our Time (both published by Norton). 1996 / paperback / ISBN 0-393-31515-0 1995 / hardcover / ISBN 0-393-03813-0 Photographs / 496 pages / history | ||||||
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