Taste and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century France

This book analyses the use of the crucial concept of ''taste'' in the works of five major seventeenth-century French authors Mr Saint Evremond La Rochefoucauld La Bruyre and Boileau. It combines close readings of important texts with a thoroughgoing political analysis of seventeenth-century French society in terms of class and gender. Dr Moriarty shows that far from being timeless and universal the term ''taste'' is culture-specific shifting according to the needs of a writer and his social group. The notion of ''taste'' not only helped to shape a new dominant culture but also registered the conflicts within that culture between a view of taste that presupposted the values of ''polite society'' as an exclusive (though not necessarily aristocratic) group and a view that stressed the value of the classical-humanist tradition as a source of standards ratified by a broader public. this study sheds light not only on the central concept but also on the individual authors discussed and on the norms of French classical literature in general.