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The first extensive study of the intersection between family and social hierarchy within early modern literary production.
List of contents
- Preface
- Part I. Introduction
- 1: Hierarchy and heredity
- 2: Why this time and place?
- 3: Inheritance under the law
- 4: Transmission beyond legal inheritance: socio-cultural legacy
- 5: Other collectivities
- 6: Family literature
- 7: The family function
- Part II. Family Literature: A Social Survey
- 8: Family literature: extent and social profile
- 9: Works shaped by family
- 10: Not going to plan
- 11: Conclusions
- Part III. Promoting Family Literature
- 12: Families and the emergence of literary history
- 13: La Croix du Maine's Bibliotheque (1584)
- 14: Scévole de Sainte-Marthe's Elogia (1598-1630)
- 15: Conclusions
- Part IV. The Marot Family
- 16: Introducing the Marots
- 17: The extent and the limits of a family's ascent through poetry
- 18: Moulding social hierarchy by communicating experience of it: Clément Marot's poetry
- 19: Conclusions
- Part V. The Brouart-Vatable-Beroald-Verville Family
- 20: Two deaths in the family: 1526, 1626
- 21: From barber-surgeon's son to professor: Matthieu Beroald
- 22: From professor's son to 'François Beroalde, escuyer, sieur de Verville, docteur en medicine'
- 23: Conclusions
- Conclusions
- Appendix: Families with more than one literary producer
About the author
Neil Kenny is Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford and Professor of French at the University of Oxford, having previously taught at the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary University of London. His work has long focused on early modern French literature, culture, and thought, within a wider European context. More recently, the focus has been on the relation of literate culture to social hierarchy. He is also interested in language policy in the UK and is Lead Fellow for Languages at the British Academy.
Summary
The first extensive study of the intersection between family and social hierarchy within early modern literary production.
Additional text
...the wealth of examples that Kenny presents makes a case far more compelling than what arguments from social history alone could have accomplished. With measured prose and in understated tones, Kenny has introduced to literary study a revolution of seismic proportions whose importance and consequences are difficult to overstate.
