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Propagandists on both sides of the French civil wars known as the Fronde drew upon religious symbols and traditions to rally their readers to condemn or support the rebellion against Queen Anne d'Autriche, regent for young King Louis XIV, and her chief minister Cardinal Jules Mazarin. The cult of the saints remained strong during the Fronde. After a spectacular procession of the relics of Saint Genevieve, patron saint of Paris, failed to bring peace to the kingdom in June 1652, multiple writers gave voice to this legendary figure. This essay examines four Mazarinades (the political pamphlets of the Fronde) in which Saint Genevieve speaks directly, either to press for peace or raise threats of revolution. It argues that the use, by turns, of maternal and militaristic aspects of this female saint demonstrates the symbolic power of gendered voices in a time of political crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the influence of heroic feminism on the construction of the autobio- The paper examines the influence of heroic feminism on the construction of the autobiographical subject in the Memoirs by Mademoiselle de Montpensier (1627–1693), specifically in its Orleans episode. This episode is important as takes place in the central city of the author’s hereditary estate. During the Fronde des Nobles, haven confirmed her power over the city of Orleans, Mademoiselle tried to demonstrate that the nobles were the King’s true support and that she was in opposition to Cardinal Mazarin. The article analyzes the way the narrator’s actions in the city are described in the Memoirs in the light of the concept of Jeanne d’Arc as the greatest champion of French national interest, promoted in historiography, drama (Vernulz, d’Aubignac etc.), and fiction (Beroalde de Verville). Two aspects of Jeanne’s image, established by the mid-17th century, become most important in the Orleans episode of the Memoirs: her heroic service to France and God’s miracle manifested in her deeds. Jeanne d’Arc thus becomes part of a wider cultural context related to the tradition of heroic feminism that may be traced back to the Ancient Greek goddess Athena and manifests itself most fully in the image of “femmes fortes,” both historical and fictional (cf.: amazons in Ariosto, Tasso or Corneille’s female characters). The comparison of the narrator of the Memoirs with these images demonstrates that a peculiar ambience of the court and salon culture of the period that was apt to glorify exceptional heroic women enabled the memoirist to describe her entry to Orleans as triumphant episode of her life and in accordance with sublime understanding of her higher mission. Mademoiselle pictures herself as a courageous Princess worthy of Bourbon’s fame guided by Providence and loved by the people.

This essay points to the connection between the fairy-tale tradition and the literary quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns in the late part of seventeenth-century France around the canonical figures of Charles Perrault, both conteur and the main advocate of the Moderns. His female counterparts, the conteuses Marie-Jeanne Lhéritier and Henriette-Julie de Murat in particular, also participated in that poetico-political debate, indirectly but convincingly, outside the French Academy, spreading this new notion of modernity in the salons and the mondain (worldly) gazettes. In this particular study, emphasis is on how their theory appears in their other productions of fiction and in their nonfiction surrounding the quarrel and their fairy-tale production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, four spiritual biographers wrote the "life" of the recently deceased lay dévote Madeleine de Lamoignon (1609-87). These authors sought to compose spiritual biographies--accounts of Madeleine's devotional life--all penned with the distant prospect of beatification or canonization in mind. This article analyzes these four retellings of Madeleine's life to excavate the process of writing vitae and situates this process within the broader context of lay spiritual biography in early modern France. A comparative exploration of Lamoignon's "lives" reveals different, and sometimes competing, conceptions of lay female sanctity in the Counter-Reformation era. By attending to neglected biographies of early modern laywomen, scholars might better understand how a life outside the cloister could be reconciled with saintliness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviews the special edition "Masques et figures du sujet féminin aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles" 77, from the journal "Tangence," edited by Claude La Charité.

On the twenty-third birthday of Queen Kristina, in December 1649, she was also honored as a maker of peace. A court ballet was an important part of the festivities. Its French text, La Naissance de la paix, has been attributed to René Descartes, an attribution which was supported by Adrien Baillet’s biography of the philosopher (1691). The question of the authorship of La Naissance de la paix has been the subject of renewed attention in recent decades and has given rise to conflicting opinions among prominent experts on Descartes. In this article their arguments are presented and critically discussed. The purpose of the article is not merely to illustrate the problem of attribution - making a decision seems impossible at present - but also to contribute to the understanding of Descartes’ stay at the court of Kristina. In the article the question of Descartes’ literary activity in the service of the queen is also discussed with reference to an unfinished pastoral drama which the philosopher wrote during his stay in Stockholm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To mark the occasion of the release of Giorgetto Giorgi’s anthology volume on Les poétiques de l’épopée en France au XVIIe siècle, the article focuses on the advancement of critical studies related to the epic genre in the 17th century, the influence of Tasso’s theoretical writings on French treatises, the as yet insufficiently recognized elaboration of a modernization project by the Modernists in France and the frequent contradictions between the authors’ statements in the preliminary texts and their literary products, or rather, between poetics and poems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a literary criticism of the apocryphal memoirs "Mémoires de Mr. L.C.D.R." (1687) and "Mémoires de Mr. d'Artagnan" (1700) by Gatien Courtilz de Sandras. The depiction of the Fronde, a period of civil wars in France from 1648-1653, and the critical function of the pastiche in pseudo-memoirs are analyzed.

Pierre Corneille's tragicomedy Le Cid has often been interpreted as the story of medieval Castile's transition from feudalism to a strong monarchy, a story that clearly resonates with France's own domestic political concerns under Louis XIII. This article focuses instead on Castile's external political engagements in the play, and how they reflect France's efforts to establish colonies during the seventeenth century. It is argued here that reading Le Cid alongside France's record of colonization in North America allows the play to be understood not only as an exploration of a fraught moment in French domestic politics, but also as a reflection of the kingdom's efforts to maintain and expand control over foreign lands. Several aspects of Le Cid - Rodrigue's duel with Don Gomès and the events surrounding it, Castile's conflict with the Moors, and King Don Fernand's mostly ineffective efforts to maintain order - appear on close inspection to have implications for affairs external as much as internal, a feature of Corneille's tragicomedy that distinguishes it from the Spanish play that inspired it. More broadly, this article shows how accounting for France's colonization of the New World may help cast the famously insular French seventeenth century in a new and revealing light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between the Querelle des anciens et des modernes and the Querelle des femmes as it was articulated in 'Le Parnasse reconnoissant, ou, Le triomphe de Madame Des-Houlières' by Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier. Published in 1694 as a riposte to Boileau's misogynist Satire X, the text contributes to the tradition of defences of women. However, L'Héritier deliberately inserts her rejoinder into the Querelle des anciens et des modernes; in so doing, she responds to another work by Boileau, the Dialogue des héros de roman. After establishing how different quarrels and concerns combine in Boileau's two texts, this article argues that L'Héritier consciously exploited the platform of 'Ancients and Moderns' to discuss women's cultural practice. While this confirms the critical view that the two quarrels were interlinked, it also reveals a hierarchy of quarrels in which the Querelle des anciens et des modernes had greater capital; as such it proved useful for a woman entering the literary field. L'Héritier's strategies demonstrate the complexities of being a Modern woman writer, despite the typical alignment of these identities, and invite us to examine how this contemporary hierarchization of quarrels has shaped their recent reception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two similar types of nonsense, 'galimatias' and 'fustian', emerged in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France and England respectively. Although they are far from being the earliest forms of nonsense, they reveal the period's concerns about obscure language and those who speak and write it. While both involve the parody of academic jargon, seen in, among others, Montaigne and Ben Jonson, galimatias and fustian are not limited to this, as they also denote the cant language of criminals and charlatans and are associated with tricksters; they thereby cut across high and low culture. Writers often appear to use them perversely to support poetic and rhetorical standards by playfully showing an extreme to be avoided, as is particularly apparent in Hoskyns's fustian oration performed at the Middle Temple revels of 1597-8. Nevertheless, examples of galimatias and fustian may also hint at the arbitrariness of such standards, prompting a questioning of literary and hence social values that judgements of style are meant to underpin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the formation and dissemination of rumours (personal insults, slander, and ad hominem attacks) in the literary and religious polemics of 1620s France involving François Garasse, Théophile de Viau, and Guez de Balzac. Even though slander is constantly condemned as a threat to society, many writers use it, and accuse others of using it, as a powerful means to discredit an enemy. My principal focus is the medium chosen for the expression of gossip, for while polemical works featuring such gossip base their legitimacy on an oral source, written texts are used to formulate and spread the rumour. This initial analysis leads to a study of how authors restage rumours in their pamphlets while simultaneously disguising the ways in which, behind the scenes, they make use of common political or religious networks. I conclude by showing that the circulation of slander and gossip is based on long-established relationships between writers, on their similar social experiences, and shared acquaintances. The wide circulation of gossip facilitated by the overlapping of the social milieu and the world of print shows how important it is not to neglect this aspect of literary history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Loys Le Roy’s final work, De la Vicissitude ou variété des choses en l’univers (1575), has often been cited as one of the earliest Modern interventions in the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. This article explores what might be Modern about this text via a close reading of its final chapter. It draws on Cave’s theory of pre-histories to situate Le Roy within the broader context of the Querelle as well as to offer a reading of Le Roy’s juxtaposition of ancient and modern culture that restores a sense of the particularity both of the work itself and of the immediate context of the work’s composition and publication. In investigating how Le Roy might be considered ‘Modern’, it explores his treatment of the themes of imitation, translation, growth and decay, and the development of new genres or kinds of writing, as informed by contemporary humanist debates, as well as by the context of the French civil wars. It is argued that Le Roy’s view of ancients and moderns is informed both by his understanding of history and by a dual conception of time, which lead him to invest cautiously in the idea of greater, or more perfect, cultural production in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generally speaking, deaths in tragedy involve murder or suicide. This article brings together a handful of disparate cases, from within Corneille's dramatic work, of deaths that do not fit into this typical tragic schema. Such deaths held something of a fascination for Corneille throughout his career: between his comedy L'Illusion comique (1635) and his swansong tragedy Suréna (1674), four of his female characters die of a broken heart, and one man is struck down by a lethal haemorrhage. Although these '(un)natural deaths' clearly compromise vraisemblance, the very backbone of seventeenth-century dramaturgy, Corneille is also keen to harness their potential benefits as a source of dramatic, ethical, or emotional effect. This article traces the various techniques that Corneille adopts in order to integrate such causally problematic deaths into his plays. As I argue, although Corneille never settles for a single strategy (sometimes refusing to re-use even techniques he deems successful), he increasingly tends to draw on his rhetorical skills to 'prepare' these potentially awkward deaths on a thematic or poetic level. This becomes most poignantly clear at the end of his final tragedy Suréna, which reworks elements of his earlier '(un)natural deaths' to unexpectedly elegiac effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1630s, Edmund Waller introduced a new couplet prosody (the "easy" style) that sought to accommodate the natural rhythms of speech to the iambic pentameter line. He achieved this by exploiting the phrasal character of the closed couplet. Waller's new versification closely paralleled the phrasal movement of the French alexandrine, which may have served as a model. In addition, the "sweetness" and smoothness for which he was praised also betray an attempt to achieve Continental standards of poetic elegance. Later poets such as John Dryden would turn Waller's "easy" versification into the heroic couplet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses use of short forms in two categories of 17th century literature including internal and external convergences. Various topics discussed include moral analysis of the short words used, its grammatical analysis, complementary approaches of the two convergences and remarqueurs. It further discusses various topics covered in both convergences including amenities disorder, principles of discernment, respectability, presentation of normative orientation and empiricism of moralists and remarqueurs. Authors mentioned include Claude Favre de Vaugelas, Jean de La Bruyère, and François de La Rochefoucauld.

Hitherto, historians have hardly ever dealt with Mlle de Scudéry's writings and their significance for the royal propaganda policy, especially in the 1660's.Using the example of her novel „La Promenade de Versailles“ the article provides the first detailed discussion of Mlle de Scudéry's political reflections and beliefs as well as her encomia of the monarchy and the sovereign. First, the article shows how the book has to be interpreted in light of the historical and literary background of the time and how it corresponds to the complete works of Mlle de Scudéry. Then, concrete political respectively monarchal aspects of the novel are analysed as well as the way in which Louis XIV is presented. Consequently, it can be shown that, in literary terms, „La Promenade de Versailles“ is not only a unique and successful synthesis of aesthetic, gallant and political elements, but also, on the historical level, a contribution to the royal propaganda canon. This point is driven home by demonstrating how the novel makes allowance for the advantages of monarchy and France's supremacy in Europe at that time, for the splendour and role model function of the French court, symbolized by the descriptions of Versailles, and, in particular, for Louis XIV's stylization as the ideal honnête homme, king, and hero. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article compares several 17th-century editions of the book "Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences" by René Descartes. It discusses several theoretical aspects of a paragraph, analyzes Descartes's use and organization of a paragraph, and considers the thematic and formal aspects of the notion of discourse coherence, particularly anaphora and conjunction. The book "Aenmerckingen op den Nieuwen Stel-Regel van Johan Stampioen" by Jacob van Wassenaer is also examined.

Copyright of Renaissance & Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme is the property of Iter Canada and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Focusing on Molière, Racine, and Madame de Lafayette, I will identify passages that can be interpreted as lessons in interpretation, as showing the role of motives in the deployment and reception of signs and dramatizing the responsibility to interpret, as well as the consequences of shirking that duty. Some characters in these works either assume or try to impose on communication a stability of meaning that is desirable only in relation to their own unavowed motivations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Cyrano de Bergerac's two novels, known collectively as L'Autre Monde, offer both a critique of efforts to categorize the Other in late seventeenth-century travel narratives, and a model for privileging an ethical, rather than definitional, approach to it. The first section, through an analysis of the scene where the narrator is mistakenly thought to be the female of an animal in the queen's zoo, shows how Cyrano lambasts this gesture of categorizing the Other in one's own terms. The second section analyses two scenes where Cyrano presents a different version of the biblical tree of life in order to show how he privileges multiplicity and openness of meaning. Cyrano's project employs both form and content to shift from an authoritative and narrative mode to a mode of what we call ‘reading the Other’. We define this term with regard to Cyrano to mean that one encounters the world as an attentive reader of fiction would: attuned to multiplicity, seeking an accretion of meaning via stories rather than via a one-to-one correspondence between word and thing, a willingness to be passive rather than authoritative when encountering something new, and valuing ethical relationships between beings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article studies the notion of virtue put forward in La Bruyère's Les Caractères. La Bruyère upholds the Aristotelian notion (rejected by hard-line Augustinians of his own century) of virtue as doing good deeds for their own sake: he examines the relationship between virtue and motive, denying that virtue is present where the behaviour is subordinated to the pursuit of self-interest. The pursuit of glory, on the other hand, may be laudable if the means to that end involve acting for the common good rather than for selfish advantage. Particular stress is laid on doing good to other people, especially when this entails self-sacrifice. Friendship, too, is evaluated in respect of its freedom from self-interestedness. Disinterestedness is not simply a moral value, but a potential source of happiness and fulfilment, in that it liberates the individual from humiliating social dependence; it is also a social ideal, capable of regenerating society, by encouraging people to focus on using their talents for the good of the community rather than for seeking advancement through favour. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Illustrateur célèbre de Fielding ou de l'abbé Prévost, Hubert François Gravelot (1699–1773) croise le chemin de Rousseau à l'occasion de l'illustration de La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761). On considère généralement qu'en dessinant la série des douze planches commandées par Rousseau, Gravelot s'acquitta fidèlement de sa tâche et qu'il suivit les consignes de l'écrivain, parvenant ainsi à une pleine réussite. Cette étude se consacre à l'une des planches les plus énigmatiques de la série, la dixième, que Rousseau appelait l'estampe des fantômes. À travers analyse de ses dessins préparatoires apparaît une divergence entre le projet initial de l'artiste et sa réalisation finale. Quels sont les modèles intervenus en cours de route? La culture littéraire de Gravelot, son goût pour le théâtre et les acteurs, et son expérience antérieure d'illustrateur lorsqu'il se trouvait en Angleterre surgissent brusquement et réservent des surprises en introduisant contre toute attente la présence de Shakespeare dans La Nouvelle Héloïse. Une autre image du travail de l'artiste apparaît dans son rapport à Rousseau, non plus faite de docilité voire de ‘servitude’ comme l'a dit la critique, mais apparaissant comme une création libérée, voire provocatrice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the history of obscenity in 16th and 17th century France, as found in literature and art. The author discusses the relationship between the French Renaissance and sexual culture, explores how obscenity was portrayed in early modern literature, and examines the use of obscenity for political and religious purposes.

The essay discusses the seventeenth-century French artisans, merchants, or tradesmen who worked in fields creating hot beverages using coffee, tea, and chocolate. It considers how early treatises on the subject of caffeinated hot beverages were hybrid publications of how-to literature, cosmopolitanism, and pharmacology which were aimed at marketing their newly introduced commodities to French consumers. Notable people considered include authors Philippe Sylvestre Dufour and Nicolas de Blégny, as well as artist Nicolas de Larmessin.

The article discusses the role of the French literary history of the 18th and early 19th century in the work of Italian scholar of French history and literature Franco Simone. Topics discussed include Simone's studies and writings concerning 18th century French writer and cultural figure Mme de Staël, as well as Staël's opinions of Italian literature, the attitudes of French writers of this time towards earlier periods including the 16th and 17th centuries, and the history of the literary movement of Romanticism.

The article discusses the studies of Italian scholar of French history and literature Franco Simone on the influence of classical literature on French literature. Topics discussed include Simone's research on the historiography of French literature and the 17th century history of French literature, Simone's attribution of the influence of classical works on 17th century French literature, and his assertion of parallels between Greek and Roman advances in civilization and the period of the Medici family rule.

The article discusses the studies of Italian scholar of French history and literature Franco Simone on the Baroque period of French literature. Reference is made to scholarship undertaken by Simone in the period from 1953 to 1972. Topics discussed include the concept of the period and its date range developed by Simone, the relationship between the concept of the French Baroque and the writing of French authors Giovanni Getto and Jean Rousset, and the influence of Simone and his work on later scholars and on the journal "Studi Francesi."

This article seeks to redefine the relationship between Boileau's Dialogue des héros de roman and Madeleine de Scudéry's Clélie. While Boileau wishes to use his text to erase Scudéry from memory, a close reading of the Dialogue and its Lucianic model reveals Scudéry's influence on Boileau's wit. Indeed, the character of Amilcar from Clélie embodies the spirit of Lucianic satire that Boileau hopes to use against Scudéry. Ultimately, Boileau is indebted to a form of enjouement that is inscribed within and popularized by Clélie, and it is this debt that Boileau tries unsuccessfully to make his reader forget in his Dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Hungarian Coronation ceremony, the description of which is widely available in 17th century French language literature.

This introductory essay presents the debate focused on the Abbé Jean Paulmier's Mémoires touchant l'establissement d'une mission chrestienne dans le troisième Monde, Autrement appellé, La Terre Australe, Meridionale, Antartique, & Inconnuë, published in 1664. The Abbé claims to be descended from a native of the Terres Australes, Essoméricq, brought to France by the explorer Gonneville in 1505. Based on this contention, the Abbé argues that the French should return to the country discovered by Gonneville and evangelise it. Recent scholarship has come increasingly to question the authenticity of Gonneville and his voyage, as well as Paulmier's genealogy. This article sets out the details of the debate and adds new elements to it, paving the way for the articles which follow, both on the Gonneville controversy and on the beginning of French missionary activity in the Pacific Ocean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the "Maximes," a book of maxims written by the 17th-century French author François duc de La Rochefoucauld. More specifically, the article explores the question of La Rochefoucauld's apparently hypocritical rejection of his own maxims. In addition, the author examines whether the maxims constitute serious philosophical content. The author concludes that while the "Maximes" do not qualify as systematic moral philosophy, they do however present a message that is anti-Stoic and funny, but not closely related to the theological discourse of Augustinianism.

Although the biographical Blaise Pascal seems progressively to have shunned friendships, the two major personae which he adopts in the course of his writing are not only more accepting of the relationship, but indeed depend significantly on it both as a structuring device and as a source of exemplary material for their persuasive strategies. The Lettres provinciales are predicated on a correspondence, first between friends, and then between enemies. In the first phase of the campaign, Montalte's exchanges with the ami provincial and dialogues with the ami Janséniste initiate a fictive device which was to become a landmark in polemical writing, even if friends in the remaining letters are both more restricted and more consistent in their functions. Turning to the Pensées, we find that, although the term 'ami' occurs relatively rarely, this infrequency is countered by the fact that it is found in three of the most centrally important fragments: S 39, an organizational fragment, devoted to an epistolary friend; S 681, which invites the reader's evaluation of a putative non-friend, who serves as one of Pascal's most striking counter-examples; and the second exemplary friend, who appears in the wager argument (S 680), showing how certain of the less irretrievable values of the unbeliever are espoused in an active campaign of persuasion. In these ways the strategic efficacy of friendship remains indispensable as one of the most convincing of Pascal's arts de persuader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his novel The Adventures of Telemachus, François de la Mothe-Fénelon (1651–1715) presents a utopian society, Boetica, in which the role of luxury, war and trade is extremely limited. In unreformed Salentum, on the other hand, Fénelon shows the opposite image, one in which the three elements reinforce each other in a fatal feedback-loop. I analyse the relationship between luxury, war and trade in the Telemachus and I sketch the background to Fénelon's views, with special attention to the military expansion and the mercantilism of Louis XIV, Fénelon's quietist spirituality, and the development of the concept of self-interest in seventeenth-century philosophy by mechanicist philosophers and economic thinkers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early modern dimension of francophone postcolonialism has yet to be fully explored. This paper adds historical depth to postcolonial studies by applying postcolonial theory to an early seventeenth-century French colonial text: Samuel de Champlain's Voyages de la Nouvelle France (1632). A postcolonial reading of Champlain's Voyages reveals the ambivalence latent in a text traditionally seen as a straightforward narrative of the coming of French civilization to the Americas. After evaluating the applicability of postcolonial theory to works such as Champlain's Voyages, discussion focuses on an episode from the text in which, on the eve of a battle against the Iroquois, Champlain has a dream predicting the defeat of the enemy by his Huron allies. As the author had previously dismissed, with sceptical superiority, the Amerindian faith in portentous dreams, this apparent shift in cultural allegiance raises interesting questions. Postcolonialism's insights into colonial power relations can shed new light on Champlain's complex relationship with his Amerindian allies and on the identity issues faced by colonizers in ‘white settler’ colonies. This paper traces Champlain's transformation from Frenchman in Canada to incipient French-Canadian, and ultimately tests the limits of taking a postcolonial perspective on the early modern. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

L'article se propose d'analyser l'usage et la portée des paradigmes animal et tératologique dans la réflexion sur les genres au XVIIe siècle. Une telle analogie est, semble-t-il, consubstantielle à la poétique, puisqu'on la trouve déjà chez Aristote, et plus tard chez Horace, qui bannit du champ artistique toute forme de monstruosité. Mais elle prend à l'âge dit 'classique' - âge des classifications selon Michel Foucault - une résonance particulière, puisque deux modèles entrent alors en concurrence. Si le bestiaire que propose par exemple Boileau dans son Art poétique relève manifestement de la conception renaissante des genres, qui prend modèle sur la pratique de la collection (ou de l'herbier) et rejette, avec Horace, les espèces monstrueuses, un autre type de catégorisation plus moderne se fait jour qui, de Guarini à Perrault en passant par Chapelain, obéit à une logique de l'arborescence inspirée d'Aristote et visant à «naturaliser» les nouveaux genres. Cette méthode fondée sur le principe de la combinatoire et de l'hybridation ne va pas cependant jusqu'à légitimer la catégorie du monstrueux comme tel, un pas qui ne sera franchi - timidement - qu'à la toute fin du XVIIe siècle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Si Dassoucy propose, dans les Avantures, une réflexion sur l'usage et la pratique des plaisirs, il se plaint également des difficultés à partager ces plaisirs. Les obligations et les conventions sociales contraignent le corps et l'esprit et faussent l'expérience de la jouissance. À côté de ces espaces normés et hiérarchisés, le cercle d'amis ne parvient pas non plus à offrir une retraite où règne l'égalité, où la reconnaissance ne dépend pas d'une soumission au maître. Les amis, comme les grands et les mécènes, menacent le contentement du sujet. Dassoucy n'imagine donc pas de communauté de compagnons et de lecteurs favorable ou capable de lui donner la légitimité dont il a besoin. Ce manque, en plus du retard de la publication du récit, explique peut-être que les Avantures n'ont pas trouvé leur public: Dassoucy lui-même ne lui a pas donné de visage, se figurant comme un auteur incompris et un jouisseur solitaire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roland Barthes describes Les Caractères as a 'remarquable collection de substances, de lieux, d'usages, d'attitudes'. The article comments upon the links La Bruyère establishes between places, 'usages', and 'attitudes', and how this contributes to his moraliste project. La Bruyère's characters seek to manage their spaces, both outdoors and in. He links his portrayal of character-types to specific external locations: districts of Paris, churches, places of public resort such as the Tuileries. Contemporary descriptions of Paris are drawn on to illuminate these connections. He shows his characters confined to one district, or moving about the city in endless displacements, out of routine or to gratify their passions. In his presentation of internal spaces, La Bruyère frequently focuses on their capacity to express relations of power, usually through exclusion. Private inaccessible space is associated with dubious or corrupt passions, whereas the philosopher, willing to do good to his fellow-creatures, keeps his door open. The final spatial dimension explored is the astronomical: La Bruyère's religious apologetic evokes the immense distances of outer space. Through the Caractères, he seeks to highlight and discredit the image of space that serves as the background to our daily lives, a space punctuated with objects of an illusory and self-centred desire, around which we propel ourselves in obedience to our passions, in a state of estrangement from God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Philologia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article takes as its starting point Descartes's statement in his Discours de la méthode, ‘Je me formai une morale par provision, qui ne consistait qu'en trois ou quatre maximes’. It offers an overview of criticism on Descartes as ethical thinker, revisiting in particular Michèle Le Dœuff's thoughts on Descartes in her L'Imaginaire philosophique (1980), and gives a reconsideration of the ethical content of Descartes's work. Notably, it considers previous early modern uses of the term par provision, with special reference to the correspondence of Nicolas Peiresc. Analysing these earlier occurrences of the term can give us a more precise understanding of what Descartes sought to communicate in the maxims of the morale par provision, and of how the maxims may connect with his later work. The article concludes by suggesting that par provision can best be understood as relating to informality. The morale par provision grants this quality an ethical significance, as Descartes shows an enduring interest in retrospective justifications and informal adjustments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the history of the literary genre of travel tale or "récit de voyage" as it was practiced in the 16th and 17th centuries. The author argues that this was a new genre at the time and authors strove to find a way to relate their voyages to their readers. According to the article, this meant that many authors used a descriptive approach where they mentioned people, plants, and animals that were discovered during their travels. Other authors would use a more narrative approach and would discuss events and activities that occurred during the travels. In addition, some writers alternated between both methods of writing.

This article proposes the view that during the course of the seventeenth century the concept of fortune in the Boethian mode, dominant in French literature during the Middle Ages, yielded to a new manner of conceiving the fortuitous. This new conception, still sometimes called ‘fortune’ but increasingly known as ‘hasard’, took the form of what we would call randomness. However, both the older and the newer ways of representing the fortuitous require awareness of individual human desire. In this study, Molière's L'École des femmes and two narratives by Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette, Zayde and La Princesse de Clèves, are considered with regard to the way the texts display chance either directly or indirectly. In conclusion, the article proposes the hypothesis that the shift from fortune to randomness in French literature is related to an increasing emphasis on what we call the reader's ‘identification’ with fictive characters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explores literary criticism of the French book "La Princesse de Clèves," by Madame de Lafayette. The author reflects on authorship and attribution debates over other books such as "La Comtesse de Tende" and "Zaïde." Emphasis is given to criticism and interpretations by authors such as Nathalie Grande, Henriette Levillain, and Sung Kim that analyze historical contexts, philosophical models, and issues of gender identity within the narrative. Other topics include the self-affirmation of women, author André Gide, and moral imperatives in art.

The Mémoires de Madame de la Guette (1613-1676) constitute a major historical document on the series of crises that hit France in the middle of the seventeenth century. Beyond its status as an historical document, however, the author's account of her struggles, successes and setbacks also reveals the everyday life of a woman who aspires to become noble. If Micheline Cuenin sees in the memoirs of Madame de la Guette the story of a woman who writes to remember (in contrast to men, who write memoirs to defend themselves), the aim of this article is to demonstrate, through an historical and literary perspective, her desire to justify herself and her choices (in particular, her choice of a husband against her father's wishes) and to prove that her life had purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses works of French Renaissance literature that depict the socioeconomic conditions of their time, and scholarly criticism of them. Discussed in particular are works by François Rabelais, the Pléiade poets, the "Essais" of Michel de Montaigne, and Pierre Corneille and Charles Sorel. Analyses of these works from Marxist and other perspectives by 20th- and 21st-century critics such as Terence Cave, Henri Weber, Philippe Desan, Roland Mousnier, and Michael Moriarty are also discussed