Brenda M. Hosington
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198737261
- eISBN:
- 9780191800740
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198737261.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
In 1639, Susan Du Verger translated selections from two of Jean-Pierre Camus’s collections of short stories, Les Euenemens singuliers (1628) and Les Relations morales (1631). She followed this in ...
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In 1639, Susan Du Verger translated selections from two of Jean-Pierre Camus’s collections of short stories, Les Euenemens singuliers (1628) and Les Relations morales (1631). She followed this in 1641 with a translation of one of his novels, Diotrephe. Histoire Valentine (1626). Camus, in his prefaces, explained his belief that works of fiction should be based on fact, since they then serve as moral exempla rather than frivolous entertainment, inducing readers to follow the paths of virtue, not vice. By carefully reproducing much of Camus’s metadiscourse, Du Verger communicated his redirection of secular fictional forms to moral and religious ends. This chapter discusses Camus’s concept of blending fact and fiction, and his views on the moral and spiritual worth of ‘truthful’ narratives, and examines the transmission of Camus’s ideas by Du Verger in her English translations and their accompanying paratexts, within the socio-cultural context of the Caroline court.Less
In 1639, Susan Du Verger translated selections from two of Jean-Pierre Camus’s collections of short stories, Les Euenemens singuliers (1628) and Les Relations morales (1631). She followed this in 1641 with a translation of one of his novels, Diotrephe. Histoire Valentine (1626). Camus, in his prefaces, explained his belief that works of fiction should be based on fact, since they then serve as moral exempla rather than frivolous entertainment, inducing readers to follow the paths of virtue, not vice. By carefully reproducing much of Camus’s metadiscourse, Du Verger communicated his redirection of secular fictional forms to moral and religious ends. This chapter discusses Camus’s concept of blending fact and fiction, and his views on the moral and spiritual worth of ‘truthful’ narratives, and examines the transmission of Camus’s ideas by Du Verger in her English translations and their accompanying paratexts, within the socio-cultural context of the Caroline court.
Warren Boutcher
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198739661
- eISBN:
- 9780191831126
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198739661.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The ‘Epilogue’ (2.7) picks up the discussion from the ‘Prologue’ (1.1) and extends it across a broader canvas in the history of the book and of reading. It asks how the case studies in previous ...
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The ‘Epilogue’ (2.7) picks up the discussion from the ‘Prologue’ (1.1) and extends it across a broader canvas in the history of the book and of reading. It asks how the case studies in previous chapters (including Pierre de L’Estoile), and new ones in this chapter of Bishop Camus, Pierre Charron, and Pierre Bayle, might revise the sketch of the Essais offered in Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis. I argue that the fundamental issue at stake in the early modern making and transmission of the Essais is the issue that is explicitly raised by Marie de Gournay in her preface of 1595, and, in a different style and context, by Charron’s use of Montaigne in De la sagesse (1601, 1604): how best to preserve and regulate the well-born individual’s natural liberté of judgement, their franchise or frankness, through reading and writing, in an age of moral corruption and confessional conflict.Less
The ‘Epilogue’ (2.7) picks up the discussion from the ‘Prologue’ (1.1) and extends it across a broader canvas in the history of the book and of reading. It asks how the case studies in previous chapters (including Pierre de L’Estoile), and new ones in this chapter of Bishop Camus, Pierre Charron, and Pierre Bayle, might revise the sketch of the Essais offered in Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis. I argue that the fundamental issue at stake in the early modern making and transmission of the Essais is the issue that is explicitly raised by Marie de Gournay in her preface of 1595, and, in a different style and context, by Charron’s use of Montaigne in De la sagesse (1601, 1604): how best to preserve and regulate the well-born individual’s natural liberté of judgement, their franchise or frankness, through reading and writing, in an age of moral corruption and confessional conflict.
