Representing avarice in Late Renaissance France / Jonathan Patterson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Patterson, Jonathan.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French literature--16th century--History and criticism.

French literature.

French literature--17th century--History and criticism.

Avarice in literature.

French literature / 16th century / History and criticism.

French literature / 17th century / History and criticism.

Local Subjects:

Avarice in literature.

French literature / 16th century / History and criticism.

French literature / 17th century / History and criticism.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xii, 319 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2015.

Summary:

Why did people talk so much about avarice in late Renaissance France, nearly a century before Moliere's famous comedy, 'L'Avare'? As wars and economic crises ravaged France on the threshold of modernity, avarice was said to be flourishing as never before. Yet by the late sixteenth century, a number of French writers would argue that in some contexts, avaricious behaviour was not straightforwardly sinful or harmful. Considerations of social rank, gender, object pursued, time, and circumstance led some to question age-old beliefs. Traditionally reviled groups (rapacious usurers, greedy lawyers, miserly fathers, covetous women) might still exhibit unmistakable signs of avarice - but perhaps not invariably, in an age of shifting social, economic and intellectual values. Across a large, diverse corpus of French texts, Jonathan Patterson shows how a range of flexible genres nourished by humanism tended to offset traditional condemnation of avarice and avares with innovative, mitigating perspectives, arising from subjective experience. In such writings, an avaricious disposition could be re-described as something less vicious, excusable, or even expedient. In this word history of avarice, close readings of well-known authors (Marguerite de Navarre, Ronsard, Montaigne), and of their lesser-known contemporaries are connected to broader socio-economic developments of the late French Renaissance (c.1540-1615). The final chapter situates key themes in relation to Moliere's L'Avare. As such, this book newly illuminates debates about avarice within broader cultural preoccupations surrounding gender, enrichment and status in early modern France.

Contents:

1.1 A Word History 1

1.2 The Ancient and Medieval Past 6

1.3 Ambivalent Critiques of Riches 13

1.4 The Late French Renaissance: Opening Lines 17

1 Avarice and Avares 32

1.1 From Sources to Definitions 33

1.2 Social Gradation of Avares 53

1.3 Bouchet: Debates on Usurers 64

2 Gender Battles 78

2.1 Female Covetousness 81

2.2 La Borderie's Venal Amie 89

2.3 Marguerite de Navarre: Female Responses to Male Avarice 97

2.4 Cholières: Exacerbating Marital Anxieties 108

3 Grasping at Gold and Money 120

3.1 Ambivalent Objects of Wealth 123

3.2 Larivey: Intrigue, Infatuation, and Injustice 132

3.3 Ronsard: Between Admiration and Avarice 142

4 The 'Fourth Estate' 160

4.1 The 'Fourth Estate': Profit Strategies 163

4.2 Serres: Avarice and la Mesnagerie 175

4.3 Hotman: Rehabilitating Avarice? 186

5 Montaigne's Avarice 201

5.1 Towards Moderate Use of Wealth 207

5.2 A Noble Disposition to Wealth 213

5.3 Partial Avarice 225

6 Before and Beyond Molière: Concluding Reflections 243

6.1 L'Avare and its Late Renaissance Echoes 245

6.2 Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards 269.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780198716518

0198716516

OCLC:

882899179