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"Hansel and Gretel" begins with the parents' decision to abandon their children. The author argues that the differences in how the children survive their exile reflect the changes in how modern societies conceptualized their organization. An early baroque tale speaks of a contracted civil society and legitimizes sovereign power, while later versions represent Enlightened social subjects capable of emerging from their minority. The motif of abandoned children reaches back to Roman antiquity, where it was linked to mimetic rivalry. The author shows in what ways mimetic rivalry appears in modern fairy tales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes an explanation of Italy's economic and social divide by taking account of the institutional legacy left by French political control during the period 1796–1814. Using a new data set regarding the duration of French domination and 'bridging' social capital in Italy in the nineteenth century, we find that a prolonged French presence is associated with a higher level of social capital as from 1814. We suggest that the transmission channel lay in the improvements, both institutional and cultural, achieved in the areas where the French presence was more prolonged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

his article sheds light on the academic side of dr. Jože Pučnik. While his civic, dissident and political activities in Slovenia have been well known, his academic work and the political philosophy he developed have been largely neglected. This is unfortunate, as already a cursory insight in Pučnik’s monography on Culture, Society and Technology, such as provided in this article, reveals the richness of his political thought. Pučnik as an intellectual, as a political thinker was not only aware of the main currents of western political philosophy after the WWII, but was also entirely on par with then political and legal thinkers. He had integrated their work into his own political philosophy, which he subsequently applied to the case study of Slovenia, a country that he felt most deeply about. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyses the body of treatises in the 18th century regarding the problem of vampirism in Eastern Europe under the Habsburg Empire. The vampires approached in these works have marked descriptive characteristics, radically different from those which, in the following century, will constitute the literary material through which the theme of the vampire has been built. In this article, we try to analyse the relationship between famine, political and economic balances of border regions, and the building of the modern imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alberto Fortis (1741-1803), a prominent representative of the Italian Enlightenment, made several journeys to the Kvarner Gulf and Dalmatia. His Travels into Dalmatia made him famous in Europe and kindled an interest in this relatively unknown area. Besides travelling extensively to the Adriatic coastal regions, Fortis travelled from Trieste to Ljubljana across the Karst and recounted his journey in The Oryctographic Letter. Despite being one of his minor works, the letter is an important indication of the author's interest in Carniola, especially its Karst phenomena, and of his contacts with Balthasar Hacquet, a naturalist active in Carniola. Fortis' books were present in the extensive library belonging to Žiga Zois, a leading promoter of science in that period, and were probably available to his intellectual circle. Whilst Fortis' contacts with intellectuals living in Carniola are far from reaching the extent of his connections with Dalmatia, his exchanges with Hacquet, as well as the presence of his books indicate the existence of contacts between the Carniolan intellectual milieux and the Italian Enlightenment. On the basis of critical studies and printed sources consisting mostly of texts published by Fortis, the article highlights certain aspects of Fortis' travels and explorations as well as his contacts with representatives of the Carniolan Enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cet article analyse le contexte rédactionnel et les réseaux des consuls de Trieste (1810-1813) à l'époque napoléonienne, dans une perspective d'histoire culturelle, avec une attention particulière à la circulation de la pensée des Lumières, des savoirs français, italianisants et allemands et des pratiques documentaires à la fin de l'Ancien Régime. Armand-Louis-Maurice Séguier (1770-1831), qui était consul pendant l'Empire français (1810-1813), fut le rédacteur de trois mémoires rédigés entre mai et juillet 1810. Ces documents inédits étaient adressés à Nompère de Champigny, ministre des Affaires Étrangères, et ils sont conservés aux Archives Nationales de France. Ces sources sont importantes, car elles explicitent les réseaux intellectuels du consul, ses lectures et ses références culturelles. En effet, ces sources fragmentaires peuvent aider à dresser la 'bibliothèque de travail' de Séguier. L'exploitation de ces sources reflète les caractéristiques des travaux du consul et elles expliquent la circulation des idées économiques des Lumières. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconstructs the historical roots of civil economy by means of a synthesis, reviewing first the experiences and work of the Enlightenment priest and philosopher Antonio Genovesi and then the critical literature on the subject. The civil economy, for Genovesi, is the ethical and popular dimension of economic life, one that entails the values of trust, or «public faith» and «reciprocity». On the basis of these values, the free market will not have supremacy over the state, nor the state over the market. Instead, there will be a system of mutual benefit and support, which will employ new forms of effort and citizen participation in public life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article wishes to present two types of scientific correspondence that contributed, in different ways, to the process of the shaping of knowledge in the French Enlightenment. On the one hand, we have the letters between peers, which exchanged on the subject of new discoveries and potential explanations of the natural phenomena. On the other hand, we find the fictional letter which is written by a man of science and addressed to a female reader; this kind of letter presents a complicated scientific issue in a simpler and an appealing way. The two types of scientific correspondence reveal the uncertainties and the many unsolved questions concerning the natural phenomena in the 18th century in France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]