Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Marie Seong-Hak Kim
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Modern France ◽  
Modern France ◽  
History Of ◽  
Proper Subject ◽  
Cultural Turn

Historiography of early modern France has of late taken a definite social and cultural turn as scholars shied away from political and intellectual history. While the value of illuminating social life and practices is undisputable, examination of the sources of law, including legal texts and juristic writings, and of the role of the political authorities in creating the state legal hierarchy is indispensable before a theorization of interaction between law and society can be envisaged. How the legal system comprising various sources of law in early modern France functioned to meet the changing needs of society and also the growing institutional demands of the state presents an important question to historians and jurists alike. History of custom as law articulates the concept of custom and its relationship to royal sovereignty and provides a clear path to our understanding of the absolute monarchy. Literature on custom is now large enough that the literature itself is a proper subject of research.

Introduction

The Perraults ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Oded Rabinovitch
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Early Modern France ◽  
Modern France ◽  
French Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Family Strategy

The introduction sets the story of the Perraults against the backdrop of early modern France. It covers the transformation of French culture in the seventeenth century (in its different dimenstion: geographical, social, and institutional, including the rise of academies and salons, the court at Versailles), the history of intellectual families, notions of family strategy, and the use of networks in historical analysis. It also includes an outline of the chapters.

Philippe Hurault de Cheverny (1528–99) and the Making of Memoirs in Early Modern France

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolae Virastau
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
French Literature ◽  
Private Life ◽  
First Person ◽  
Early Modern France ◽  
Privileged Position ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Modern France ◽  
Public Persona ◽  
History Of

Abstract Memoirs occupy a privileged position in the history of French literature. Historians of French memoirs consider the Memoires d’Estat of Chancellor Philippe Hurault de Cheverny to be a stepping stone in the history of self-writing because they seem to mark a transition from self-narratives focusing on the author’s public persona to a self-writing that emphasizes the author’s private life, that is, to something more akin to modern autobiography. Unlike most autobiographical works printed at the time, Cheverny’s memoirs integrate details about the author’s private life and family affairs into the more common first-person chronicle of his public career. A closer examination reveals, however, that multiple practices of self-writing are at work in Cheverny’s book, and that its apparent originality in the history of memoirs and their relation to autobiography more generally are an effect of editorial changes made after the author’s death. The article argues that practices of collective writing and editing of personal documents were common in the early modern age.

Recording the History of Secret Thoughts in Early Modern France

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warren Boutcher
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Early Modern France ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Modern France ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Registers

Chapter 2.5 begins with Pierre Huet’s early eighteenth-century description of the school of Montaigne, which he says has been flourishing for more than a century. He denounces the Essais as ‘the breviary of urbane loafers and ignorant pseudointellectuals’, of undisciplined, over-free literates who do not want to pursue proper scholarship and knowledge. The chapter goes on to offer two further case-studies of the life-writing of such free literates in early modern France (Jean Maillefer and Pierre de L’Estoile), as well as a coda on Pierre Coste and John Locke. Both read Montaigne’s work while writing manuscript journals to domestic and private ends; both combined reading and writing in books with the keeping and reviewing of personal records. L’Estoile reveals the significance of Montaigne’s references to the Essais as a registre––both institutional and personal registers were ubiquitous in this period.

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