The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Early Modern Europe

Encounters with a Certain Something

Bibliographic Data

ID19972991
AuthorsRichard Scholar (0000-0002-0371-7977, Fellow and Tutor in French, Oriel College, Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2005
Pages334
Publication date2005-12-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueJE-NE-SAIS-QUOI IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE: ENCOUNTERS WITH A CERTAIN SOMETHING. (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199274406.001.0001
OpenAlexW592409024
Open LibraryOL22717461M
ISBN9780199274406
LanguageEN
Citations received22

What is the je-ne-sais-quoi? How - if at all - can it be put into words? In addressing these questions, Richard Scholar offers the first full-length study of the je-ne-sais-quoi and its fortunes in early modern Europe. He describes the rise and fall of the expression as a noun and as a topic of debate, examines its cluster of meanings, and uncovers the scattered traces of its 'pre-history'. The je-ne-sais-quoi is often assumed to belong purely to the realm of the literary, but in the early modern period it serves to articulate problems of knowledge in natural philosophy, the passions, and culture, and for that reason it is approached here from an interdisciplinary perspective. Placing major figures of the period such as Montaigne, Shakespeare, Descartes, Corneille, and Pascal alongside some of their lesser-known contemporaries, Scholar argues that the je-ne-sais-quoi serves above all to capture first-person encounters with a 'certain something' that is as difficult to explain as its effects are intense. When early modern writers use the expression in this way, he suggests, they give literary form to an experience that twenty-first-century readers may recognize as something like their own

Art · Linguistics · Literature · Passion · Politeness · Classics · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology · Renaissance Literature and Culture · Etymologie · Français (Langue) · French language · Greece · Idioms · in literature · Je ne sais quoi (L'expression française) · Je ne sais quoi (The French phrase)

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