Taste and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century France [Paperback]

This book analyses the use of the crucial concept of 'taste' in the works of five major seventeenth-century French authors.This book analyses the use of the crucial concept of 'taste' in the works of five major seventeenth-century French authors, M?r?, Saint Evremond, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruy?re and Boileau. It combines close readings of important texts with a thoroughgoing political analysis of seventeenth-century French society in terms of class and gender.This book analyses the use of the crucial concept of 'taste' in the works of five major seventeenth-century French authors, M?r?, Saint Evremond, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruy?re and Boileau. It combines close readings of important texts with a thoroughgoing political analysis of seventeenth-century French society in terms of class and gender.This book analyses the use of the crucial concept of 'taste' in the works of five major seventeenth-century French authors, M?r?, Saint Evremond, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruy?re and Boileau. It combines close readings of important texts with a thoroughgoing political analysis of seventeenth-century French society in terms of class and gender. Dr Moriarty shows that far from being timeless and universal, the term 'taste' is culture-specific, shifting according to the needs of a writer and his social group. The notion of 'taste' not only helped to shape a new dominant culture, but also registered the conflicts within that culture between a view of taste that presupposted the values of 'polite society' as an exclusive (though not necessarily aristocratic) group, and a view that stressed the value of the classical-humanist tradition as a source of standards ratified by a broader public. this study sheds light not only on the central concept, but also on the individual authors discussed and on the norms of French classical literature in general.Preface; 1. 'Taste' and history; 2. Defining go?t: the dictionaries; 3. M?r?: taste and the ideology of honntet?; 4. Saint Evremond: taste anl„