Politeness and Its Discontents: Problems in French Classical Culture

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Cambridge University Press, Jan 9, 1992 - History - 245 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.
 

Contents

Acknowledgements page x
1
Hyperbole
11
Ogres
27
Racines Phèdre
40
Polish police polis
53
Addison and Marivaux
74
The commerce of the self
97
The writer as performer
113
Beyond politeness? Speakers and audience at
129
Translating the British
151
Jacques or his master? Diderot and the peasants
173
Enlightened primitivism
187
Frontiers of civilization
204
Notes
219
Index
238
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