Subjectivity and Subjugation in Seventeenth-Century Drama and Prose: The Family Romance of French Classicism (Cambridge Studies in French, Series Number 36) - Softcover

Greenberg, Mitchell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 052103230X ISBN 13: 9780521032308

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2006

Synopsis

This book analyzes the relationship between an emergent modern subjectivity in seventeenth-century French literature, particularly in dramatic works, and the contemporaneous evolution of the absolutist state. It shows how major writers of the Classical period (Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Lafayette) elaborate a new subject in and through their representations of the family, and argues that the family serves as the mediating locus of a patriarchal ideology of sexual and political containment. Professor Greenberg argues that this reflects the conflicting social, political and economic forces that were shifting European society away from the universe of the Renaissance and guiding it toward the "transparency" of Classical representation.

About this title

Book Description:

This 1992 book analyses the relation between an emergent modern subjectivity in seventeenth-century French literature, particularly in dramatic works, and the contemporaneous evolution of the absolutist state.

About the Author:

Mitchell Greenberg is Goldwin Smith Professor of Romance Studies at Cornell University. He is the author of several books on seventeenth-century French literature and culture. Greenberg uses contemporary critical theories, particularly Freudian and post-Freudian approaches, in the interpretation of early modern texts.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 052103230X
• ISBN 13: 9780521032308
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256