of the philosophic community' and thus integral to the process of Enlightenment. In short, Goodman argues, the 17th and 18th century saw the emergence of the academic, Enlightenment salons, which came out of the aristocratic 'schools of civilité'. Politeness, argues Goodman, took second-place to academic discussion. The period in which salons were dominant has been labeled the 'age of conversation'. The topics of conversation within the salons - that is, what was and was not 'polite' to talk about - are thus vital when trying to determine the form of the salons. The salonnières were expected, ideally, to run and moderate the conversation (See Women in the salon). There is, however, no universal agreement among historians as to what was and was not appropriate conversation. Marcel Proust 'insisted that politics was scrupulously avoided'. Others suggested that little other than government was ever discussed. The disagreements that surround the content of discussion partly explain why the salon's relationship with the public sphere is so heavily contested. Individuals and collections of individuals that have been of cultural significance overwhelmingly cite some form of engaged, explorative conversation regularly held with an esteemed group of acquaintances as the source of inspiration for their contributions to culture, art, literature and politics, leading some scholars to posit the salon's influence on the public sphere as being more widespread than previously appreciated. The salon and the "public sphere" Recent historiography of the salons has been dominated by Jürgen Habermas' work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (triggered largely by its translation into French, in 1978, and then English, in 1989), which argued that the salons were of great historical importance. Theaters of conversation and exchange – such as the salons, and the coffeehouses in England – played a critical role in the emergence of what Habermas termed the public sphere, which emerged in cultural-political contrast to court society. Thus, while women retained a dominant role in the historiography of the salons, the salons received increasing amounts of study, much of it in direct response to, or heavily influenced by Habermas' theory. The most prominent defense of salons as part of the public sphere comes from Dena Goodman's The Republic of Letters, which claims that the 'public sphere was structured by the salon, the press and other institutions of sociability'. Goodman's work is also credited with further emphasizing the importance of the salon in terms of French