Disenchantment, Skepticism, and the Early Modern Novel in Spain and France

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-032-39048-2
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 182 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 289 g

Reihe: New Interdisciplinary Approaches to Early Modern Culture

This volume examines five early modern novels from the seventeenth century in Spain and France as examples of literature as a form of skeptical inquiry: Cervantes’s Don Quijote, Zayas’s Desengaños amorosos, Scarron’s Roman comique, Cyrano de Bergerac’s L’Autre Monde, and Mme. de Lafayette’s Zayde.

These early modern novels encourage readers to take a critical stance toward accepted beliefs, through content that stages multiple encounters with the shockingly unfamiliar as well as through experiments in literary form, especially the interpolated story. At its broadest reach, this study asserts the fundamental value of literature as a means of encouraging discernment, recognizing the illusory, and honing critical acuity. In terms of the particularity of the historical moment, the volume also identifies the early modern novel as uniquely able to represent the conflicting value spheres of early modernity because of its ability to present multiple voices and its fascination with conflicting vantage points.

Due to its interdisciplinary nature, Disenchantment, Skepticism, and the Early Modern Novel in Spain and France appeals to literary scholars and intellectual historians of the early modern period in Europe, as well as to advanced undergraduates and postgraduates studying the early novel, intellectual history, and philosophy of literature.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Delehanty, Ann T.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction 1. "Don Quijote and the Lessons of Shock" 2. "Interrogating Social Categories in María de Zayas’s Desengaños amorosos" 3. "Scarron’s Roman comique and the Dangers of Undifferentiability" 4. "Cyrano de Bergerac’s L’Autre Monde and the Critique of Fixity" 5. "Madame de Lafayette’s Zayde and the Insuperability of Alienation" 6. Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Ann T. Delehanty is John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of French and Humanities at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She is also the author of Literary Knowing in Neoclassical France: From Aesthetics to Poetics (2012).