Politeness and its Discontents
Problems in French Classical Culture
£97.99
Part of Cambridge Studies in French
- Author: Peter France
- Date Published: January 1992
- availability: Available
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9780521370707
£
97.99
Hardback
Other available formats:
Paperback, eBook
Looking for an inspection copy?
This title is not currently available on inspection
-
This is a 1992 study of writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, mainly in France, but also in Britain and Russia. Its focus is on the establishing and questioning of rational, 'civilized' norms of 'politeness', which in the ancien régime meant not just polite manners, but a certain ideal of society and culture. Within this general context, a series of familiar oppositions, between polite and rude, tame and wild, urban(e) and rustic, élite and popular, adult and child, reason and unreason, gives the initial impetus to enquiries which often show how these opposites interpenetrate, how hierarchies are reversed, and how compromises are sought. Polite society, like polite literature, needs and desires its opposite. The ideal is often the meeting of garden and wilderness, where the savage encounters the civilized and gifts are exchanged. Professor France points to the centrality, but also the vulnerability, in classical culture, of the ideal of 'politeness', and his discussion embraces revolutionary eloquence and enlightened primitivism, the value of hyperbole, and the essay as a form of polite sociability.
Read more- Author well known in the field of French studies - editor of a new edition of Oxford Companion to French Literature
- Relevant to 17th- and 18th-century literature in Europe generally - contains material on Britain and Russia as well as France
- This topic has wide implications for the understanding of classical culture
Customer reviews
Not yet reviewed
Be the first to review
Review was not posted due to profanity
×Product details
- Date Published: January 1992
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9780521370707
- length: 260 pages
- dimensions: 216 x 140 x 19 mm
- weight: 0.48kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. Excess and Unreason:
1. Hyperbole
2. Ogres
3. Myth and modernity: Racine's Phèdre
Part II. Enlightened Sociability:
4. Polish, police, polis
5. The sociable essayist: Addison and Marivaux
6. The commerce of the self
7. The writer as performer
8. Beyond politeness? Speakers and audience at the Convention Nationale
Part III. Confronting the Other:
9. Translating the British
10. Jacques or his master? Diderot and the peasants
11. Enlightened primitivism
12. Frontiers of civilization
Notes
Index.
Sorry, this resource is locked
Please register or sign in to request access. If you are having problems accessing these resources please email [email protected]
Register Sign in» Proceed
You are now leaving the Cambridge University Press website. Your eBook purchase and download will be completed by our partner www.ebooks.com. Please see the permission section of the www.ebooks.com catalogue page for details of the print & copy limits on our eBooks.
Continue ×Are you sure you want to delete your account?
This cannot be undone.
Thank you for your feedback which will help us improve our service.
If you requested a response, we will make sure to get back to you shortly.
×