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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Logic of Idolatry in Seventeenth-Century French Literature

The Logic of Idolatry in Seventeenth-Century French Literature

McClure, Ellen

Hardcover

Series: Gallica, Book 44

Literary CriticismPoetry Criticism

ISBN10: 1843845504
ISBN13: 9781843845508
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Published: Mar 20 2020
Pages: 254
Weight: 1.17
Height: 0.63 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
A sensitive investigation into how French writers, including Descartes and Racine, treated a central preoccupation in early modern writings.

Idolatry was one of the dominant and most contentious themes of early modern religious polemics. This book argues that many of the best-known literary and philosophical works of the French seventeenth century were deeply engaged and concerned with the theme. In a series of case studies and close readings, it shows that authors used the logic of idolatry to interrogate the fractured and fragile relationship between the divine and the human, with particular attention to the increasingly fraught question of the legitimacy of human agency. Reading d'Urfé, Descartes, La Fontaine, Sévigné, Molière, and Racine through the lens of idolatry reveals heretofore hidden aspects of their work, all while demonstrating the link between the emergent autonomy of literature and philosophy and the confessional conflicts that dominated the period. In so doing, Professor McClure illustrates how religion can become a source of interpretive complexity, and how this dynamism can and should be taken into account in early modern French studies and beyond.

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