Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I EXCESS AND UNREASON
- PART II ENLIGHTENED SOCIABILITY
- 4 Polish, police, polis
- 5 The sociable essayist: Addison and Marivaux
- 6 The commerce of the self
- 7 The writer as performer
- 8 Beyond politeness? Speakers and audience at the Convention Nationale
- PART III CONFRONTING THE OTHER
- Notes
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in French
5 - The sociable essayist: Addison and Marivaux
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I EXCESS AND UNREASON
- PART II ENLIGHTENED SOCIABILITY
- 4 Polish, police, polis
- 5 The sociable essayist: Addison and Marivaux
- 6 The commerce of the self
- 7 The writer as performer
- 8 Beyond politeness? Speakers and audience at the Convention Nationale
- PART III CONFRONTING THE OTHER
- Notes
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in French
Summary
The politeness discussed in the last chapter finds an expression in some characteristic kinds of writing. These are the so-called minor genres (far from minor in reality) which embody in their very form something of the ideal of polite communication. There are salon genres such as the portrait or the maxim, but the three central forms are the dialogue, the letter and the essay. All of these are much beloved of French and British authors of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. All are capable of embracing subjects from the trivial to the grandiose, from the commonplace to the abstruse. And in all of them the matter is poured into a specifically social mould, where the polite values of ease and unpretentiousness (le naturel) are paramount. The enemy is pedantry, dogmatic self-assertiveness. The ideal is well expressed in a fine passage from the introduction to Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion:
Reasonable men may be allowed to differ, where no one can reasonably be positive, opposite sentiments, even without any decision, afford an agreeable amusement, and if the subject be curious and interesting, the book carries us, in a manner, into company, and unites the two greatest and purest pleasures of human life, study and society.
Hume is writing about dialogue here, but his ideal marriage of study and society suits the serious essay equally well. In fact he did write a short essay ‘On Essay-Writing’ which makes similar points.
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- Politeness and its DiscontentsProblems in French Classical Culture, pp. 74 - 96Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992
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