MARC Record from Library of Congress

LEADER: 02939cam a2200361 i 4500
001 2014948660
003 DLC
005 20150717084706.0
008 140815s2015 enka b 001 0 eng d
010 $a 2014948660
015 $aGBB4C9407$2bnb
015 $aGBB4C9407$2dnb
016 7 $a016945832$2Uk
020 $a9780198716518 (cloth)
020 $a0198716516 (cloth)
035 $a(OCoLC)ocn882899179
040 $aERASA$beng$cERASA$erda$dBDX$dBTCTA$dUKMGB$dYDXCP$dOCLCO$dCDX$dOCLCF$dNYP$dDEBBG$dCOO$dHTM$dDLC
042 $alccopycat
050 00 $aPQ239$b.P38 2015
082 04 $a840.71
100 1 $aPatterson, Jonathan.
245 10 $aRepresenting avarice in Late Renaissance France /$cJonathan Patterson.
250 $aFirst edition.
264 1 $aOxford :$bOxford University Press,$c2015.
300 $axii, 319 pages :$billustrations ;$c23 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$bnc$2rdacarrier
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (pages 279-311) and index.
520 8 $aWhy did people talk so much about avarice in late Renaissance France, nearly a century before Moliere's famous comedy, 'L'Avare'? As wars and economic crises ravaged France on the threshold of modernity, avarice was said to be flourishing as never before. Yet by the late sixteenth century, a number of French writers would argue that in some contexts, avaricious behaviour was not straightforwardly sinful or harmful. Considerations of social rank, gender, object pursued, time, and circumstance led some to question age-old beliefs. Traditionally reviled groups (rapacious usurers, greedy lawyers, miserly fathers, covetous women) might still exhibit unmistakable signs of avarice - but perhaps not invariably, in an age of shifting social, economic and intellectual values. Across a large, diverse corpus of French texts, Jonathan Patterson shows how a range of flexible genres nourished by humanism tended to offset traditional condemnation of avarice and avares with innovative, mitigating perspectives, arising from subjective experience. In such writings, an avaricious disposition could be re-described as something less vicious, excusable, or even expedient. In this word history of avarice, close readings of well-known authors (Marguerite de Navarre, Ronsard, Montaigne), and of their lesser-known contemporaries are connected to broader socio-economic developments of the late French Renaissance (c.1540-1615). The final chapter situates key themes in relation to Moliere's L'Avare. As such, this book newly illuminates debates about avarice within broader cultural preoccupations surrounding gender, enrichment and status in early modern France. --$cSource other than Library of Congress.
650 0 $aFrench literature$y16th century$xHistory and criticism.
650 0 $aFrench literature$y17th century$xHistory and criticism.
650 0 $aAvarice in literature.