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    Playing simplicity: polemical stupidity in the writing of the French Enlightenment

    Howells, Robin (2002) Playing simplicity: polemical stupidity in the writing of the French Enlightenment. French studies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries 12. Oxford: Peter Lang. ISBN 3906768368.

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    Abstract

    Polemical stupidity - a critical concept drawn from Bakhtin – denotes the strategic refusal to understand. It appears most familiarly in the character of the Fool (like Candide), who genuinely does not understand the world, thus unmasking its incoherence. But in literature it can cover too the stance of the narrator or author (who pretends to misunderstand). It also functions at the levels of genre and style, embracing parody and rewriting in general. It is a dialogic or open form of critical engagement. Though it can be found throughout Western literature, polemical stupidity is most richly characteristic of the writing of the French Enlightenment. This book suggests why, and traces its rise and fall as a discursive practice in the century from Pascal to Rousseau. Early chapters consider the concept itself, its emergence in Pascal's ‘Lettres provinciales’, worldliness and unworldliness, and the new writing of 1660-1700 (critical history to fairy tales). The main part of the book, on the age of Enlightenment itself, contains successive chapters on Regency theatre, Montesquieu's ‘Lettres persanes’, Marivaux, Voltaire, Diderot, and finally Rousseau who will not play.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Book
    Additional Information: The full text of the book cannot be made available here because of copyright restrictions. The full text attached is of the contents listing and the introduction only.
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 25 Jul 2007
    Last Modified: 09 Aug 2023 12:29
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/518

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