An Introduction to 16th-Century French Literature and Thought: Other Times, Other Places Contributor(s): Kenny, Neil (Author), Hammond, Nicholas (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0715634879 ISBN-13: 9780715634875 Publisher: Bristol Classical Press OUR PRICE: $34.60 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: March 2008 Annotation: Short accessible introductions to European literature and culture, aimed at students. Each book provides an overview of its period and a useful glossary. Further reading is provided throughout |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | European - French |
Dewey: 840.900 |
Physical Information: 0.6" H x 5.4" W x 8.3" (0.55 lbs) 160 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - French |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: The age of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Erasmus, Luther, and Machiavelli produced in France too some of Europe's greatest ever literature and thought: Montaigne's Essays, Rabelais' comic fictions, Ronsard's poetry, Calvin's theology. These and numerous other extraordinary writings emerged from and contributed to cultural upheavals: the movement usually known as the Renaissance, which sought to revive ancient Greek and Roman culture for present-day purposes; religious reform, including the previously unthinkable rejection of Catholicism by many in the Reformation, culminating in decades of civil war in France; the French language's transformation into an instrument for advanced abstract thought. This book introduces this vibrant literature and thought via an apparent paradox. Most writers were profoundly concerned to improve life in the here-and-now - socially, politically, morally, spiritually. Yet they often tried to do so by making detours, in their writing, to other times and places: antiquity; heaven and hell; the hidden recesses of Nature, the cosmos, or the future; the remote location of an absent loved one; the newly 'discovered' Americas.The point was to show readers that the only way to live in the here-and-now was to connect it to larger realities - cosmic, spiritual, and historical. |