MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 02788cam a2200337 i 4500
001 11364612
005 20150526230032.0
008 140704s2015 enk b 001 0 eng d
020 $a9780198716518
020 $a0198716516
024 $a40024742185
035 $a(OCoLC)882899179
035 $a(OCoLC)ocn882899179
035 $a(NNC)11364612
040 $aERASA$beng$erda$cERASA$dBDX$dBTCTA$dUKMGB$dYDXCP$dNhCcYBP
050 4 $aPQ239$b.P38 2015
082 04 $a840.9/353$223
100 1 $aPatterson, Jonathan,$eauthor.
245 10 $aRepresenting avarice in late Renaissance France /$cJonathan Patterson.
250 $aFirst edition.
264 1 $aOxford :$bOxford University Press,$c2015.
300 $axii, 319 pages ;$c23 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$bnc$2rdacarrier
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.
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
650 0 $aFrench literature$y16th century$xHistory and criticism.
650 0 $aFrench literature$y17th century$xHistory and criticism.
650 0 $aAvarice in literature.
852 00 $bglx$hPQ239$i.P38 2015