Author : Geoffroy Atkinson
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000831671
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (8 download)
Book Synopsis Prelude to the Enlightenment by : Geoffroy Atkinson
Download or read book Prelude to the Enlightenment written by Geoffroy Atkinson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-08 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1971, Prelude to the Enlightenment is a study of the attitudes of French writers during the transition from the Classical Age to the Enlightenment. Professors Atkinson and Keller investigate the increasing vogue for emotionalism, weeping, and confession and attitudes towards love and morality. On a more intellectual plane, the approaches of authors of the time to literary questions and their treatment of the world of reality. This book presents wide range of quotations from many writers of the period 1690 to 1740 – among them Mativaux; l’Abbé Prévost; Saint-Evremond; the novelists Robert Chasles, Mme Aubin, Mme de Tencin and la Comtesse d’Aulnoy; the remarkable and little-known writer Jean Buvat, who worked as a copyist in the Royal Library and wrote the Journal de la Régence; and l’Abbé Pluche, author of Le Spectacle de la Nature. Some of these are well known, some virtually unheard of, but all provide clues to the character of the age. By combining their own comments with contemporary quotations, Professors Atkinson and Keller give modern readers a feeling for the atmosphere of the period that followed the Golden Age and a deeper appreciation of the literature of the Enlightenment itself.
