Politeness and its discontents : problems in French classical culture
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.
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xi, 245 pages ; 23 cm.
9780521370707, 9780521029865, 0521370701, 0521029864
23178288
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