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Author France, Peter, 1935- author

Title Politeness and its discontents : problems in French classical culture / Peter France
Published Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1992
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Description 1 online resource (xi, 245 pages)
Series Cambridge studies in French ; 35
Cambridge studies in French ; 35
Contents Pt. 1. Excess and unreason -- 1. Hyperbole -- 2. Ogres -- 3. Myth and modernity: Racine's "Phedre."
Pt. 2. 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
Pt. 3. Confronting the other -- 9. Translating the British -- 10. Jacques or his master? Diderot and the peasants -- 11. Enlightened primitivism -- 12. Frontiers of civilization
Summary 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
Notes Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015)
Subject French literature -- European influences.
European literature -- French influences.
Literature and society -- France.
Social ethics in literature.
Courtesy in literature.
Classicism -- France.
French literature -- 17th century -- History and criticism.
French literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism.
SUBJECT France -- Civilization -- 18th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh92005892
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780511551451
0511551452
9780521370707
0521370701
9780521029865
0521029864
Other Titles Politeness et its Discontents