Description: This collection of twenty essays, of which five are in French, written by leading English and French literary and historical scholars, deconstructs the ethical and political framework supporting and circumscribing the actions of a powerful elite in France between the early 1600s and the final years of Louis XIV's reign.
Brief description: Elizabeth Woodrough is Lecturer in French, specialising in French literature of the seventeenth century, University of Exeter. Keith Cameron is Professor in French and Renaissance Studies, University of Exeter.
Review Quotes:
"The editors are to be complimented for assembling this international team of scholars, who have explored a theme which is central to the cultural and political history of seventeenth-century France." French History Vol. 12, No. 3 1998 ". . .this collection contains much that will interest the historian and the literary scholar." (English Historical Review, April 1998)