Politeness and its Discontents Problems in French Classical Culture [Hardcover]

A 1992 study of the place and nature of the ideal of politeness in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writing in France, Britain and Russia.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 r?gime meant not just polite manners, but a certain ideal of society and 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 r?gime meant not just polite manners, but a certain ideal of society and culture.A study of the place and nature of the ideal of politeness in seventeenth and eighteenth-century writing in France, Britain and Russia. This ideal covered not just polite manners, but all the civilized norms of society and culture, as opposed to elements considered childish, irrational, savage or vulgar. Professor France shows how interpenetration and compromise between polite and rude, tame and wild, are central features of classical writings, arguing that polite society needed and desired its opposite.Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Excess and Unreason: 1. Hyperbole; 2. Ogres; 3. Myth and modernity: Racine's Ph?dre; Part II. 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; Part III. Confronting the Other: 9. Translating the British; 10. Jacques or his master? Diderot and the peasants; 11. Enlightened primitivism; 12. Frontiers of civilization; Notes; Index. These well-crafted essays are particularly valuable for their breadth of scholarship and for the attention paid to minor writers or less well-knownlm