The je-ne-sais-quoi in early modern Europe : encounters with a certain something / Richard Scholar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Scholar, Richard.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Je ne sais quoi (The French phrase).

Physical Description:

xiii, 334 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2005.

Summary:

What is the je-ne-sais-quoi, if it is indeed something at all, and how 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. It examines the expression's rise and fall as a noun and as a topic of philosophical and literary debate, its cluster of meanings, and the scattered traces of its "pre-history." Placing major writers of the period such as Montaigne, Shakespeare, Descartes, Corneille, and Pascal alongside some of their lesser-known contemporaries, it argues that the je-ne-sais-quoi serves above all to trace a series of first-person encounters with a certain something as difficult to explain as its effects are intense, and which can be expressed only by being expressed differently. This book shows how the je-ne-sais-quoi comes to express that certain something in the early modern period, and suggests that it remains capable of doing so today.

Notes:

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)-- University of Oxford, 2003.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [289]-315) and index.

ISBN:

0199274401

OCLC:

62210545

Publisher Number:

9780199274406