front cover of Humanism in Crisis
Humanism in Crisis
The Decline of the French Renaissance
Philippe Desan, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 1991
The uniqueness and importance of Humanism in Crisis arises from the way in which a significant historical event—the end of the French Renaissance—is examined from several different perspectives in order to provide a thorough investigation of its causes and consequences. Although historians, philosophers, sociologists, and literary critics view the French Renaissance differently, they all seem to agree on the notion that something happened between 1580 and 1630—between Montaigne and Descartes—that transformed every aspect of society and that undermined the foundation of humanism in France, dividing the French Renaissance from the "Grand siècle" that followed it. The causes of this decline, however, are as obscure as a precise determination of when the French Renaissance "died." In Humanism in Crisis, fourteen internationally known scholars examine such topics as education, philosophy, scientific method, historical relativism, cosmography, literary genres, everyday life, medicine, and mythology and detect a series of crises that acted to bring about the decline of humanism and the end of the French Renaissance. The diversity of approaches allows a comprehensive vision of society to be presented. Moreover, several essays provide answers to questions asked in others, thus creating a sense of unity by relating individual contributions to each other.
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front cover of Literature and Social Practice
Literature and Social Practice
Edited by Philippe Desan, Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, and Wendy Griswold
University of Chicago Press, 1989
"The sociology of literature, in the first of many paradoxes, elicits negations before assertions," write the editors of this volume. "It is not an established field or academic discipline. . . . Yet none of these limitations affect the vitality and rigor of the larger enterprise."

Convinced that literature and society are essentially related to each other, the contributors to this collection attempt to define the various sociological practices of literature and to give expression to this enterprise and the commitments of its partisans. In various ways, the essays assembled here seek to integrate text, institution, and individual (both author and critic) as necessary parts of the analysis of literature. Diverse, sometimes contradictory approaches to literature (Marxism, publishing history, new historicism, and others) are utilized as the contributors explore such topics as text, author-function, and appropriation; the reality of representation; the sociology of exchange; the uses of "serious" fiction; poetry and politics; publishing history; and the literary field.
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