Politeness and Its Discontents: Problems in French Classical CultureCambridge University Press, 2006 M11 2 - 260 pages 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. |