Literary History Meets the History of Reading
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8940873 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Geoffrey Turnovsky (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 427-447 |
| Publication date | 2018-07-30 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | French Historical Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0016-1071 • E-ISSN: 1527-5493 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00161071-6682083 |
| OpenAlex | W2887015848 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 16 |
This article revisits the letters written by readers of the Mercure galant who responded to the “gallant question,” posed by the periodical's editor in an April 1678 issue, regarding a central plot twist of Madame de Lafayette's novel La Princesse de Clèves. Highlighting the expansive, democratic, and participatory nature of this readership that connected with the unprecedented complexity of the novel's characters, scholars have imputed to this public a modernity reflecting that of the novel itself, often considered “the first modern novel” in French. Closely analyzing the letters in light of their arguments and of the novel's editorial history, this essay explores the implications of a disconnect between the work and the readers in question, who had perhaps not read the text and did not, in any case, empathize with its protagonist's dilemma as presented by the Mercure
Art · Art history · Audience measurement · Dilemma · Epistemology · Expansive · History of literature · Linguistics · Literature · Modernity · Plot (graphics · Political science · Reading (process · Sociology · Historical and Literary Analyses · Historical and Literary Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Rousseau and Enlightenment Thought
Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France
The State in Early Modern France
The Eighteenth-Century French Novel. Techniques of Illusion
Ancients against Moderns
Lire au xviiie siècle
The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History
Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth Century France
Du long au court
Julie, ou La Nouvelle Heloise
The Absolutism of Louis XIV as Social Collaboration
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,09 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2015 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |