This chapter illustrates the extent to which English readers were familiar with French works produced by the reforming writers of Port-Royal and by the controversy over Jansenism which gathered pace after the publication of Jansen’s Augustinus in 1640. It shows that readers from across the spectrum of religious and political opinion in England were aware from an early stage of the principal themes and the major works associated with the controversy, including the output not only of Antoine Arnauld, the intellectual leader of the Port-Royal group, and Pascal, its most celebrated apologist, but also of their spiritual master, the abbé de Saint-Cyran. In surveying these works the chapter also extends the background provided in chapter 1 across some of the wider themes which occupied the Port-Royalists.
Port-Royal et l’histoire (du) littéraire
