Within a relatively brief period of time (1690-1705), Madame D'Aulnoy created a rich and diviersified collection of fairy tales which rank second in importance only to those of Charles Perrault. Through close readings of the various tales, Professor DeGraff demonstrates how the interplay of structural forms and themes can best be understood within the framework of psychological intepretation. This study is above all a sensitive and innovative approach to an author whose writings have not yet received the critical acclaim they so justly deserve. This work is accessible to specialists and non-specialists alike and will appeal to proponents of women's studies. -- Amazon.com.

This collection aims to give a chronological insight into the evolution of conduct literature, from its early roots in the Renaissance period through to the dramatically different role that women played at the emergence of the 20th century. The material presented in this six-volume set moves away from courtly etiquette, adopting a more middle-class, domestic focus, and includes facsimile reproductions of sermons, poems, narratives and cookery books.Social and literary historians recognise the 1790s as a moment of political crisis and turbulence in British history: the intense reactions in Britain to increasing revolutionary violence in France politicised almost every aspect of cultural life. At the centre of discursive hostilities was the opposition between sentimentality, on the one hand, and rationality, on the other. Two of the most important literary forms utilised for expressing these polemics were novels and treatises on education, as well as conduct writing. Conduct Literature for Women IV, 1770-1830 makes available this body of writing, which has been less well studied in respect to the war of ideas than the former two.

‘I resolved to write a book which would create some stir in the world and continue to do after I had gone from it.’ - Choderlos de Laclos A great sensation at the time of first publication, Les Liaisons Dangereuses reads as much the most 'modern' of eighteenth-century novels. Viewed by some critics as a morality tale and others as a subtle inquiry into libertinism, it brilliantly depicts the foibles of the French aristocracy on the eve of the French Revolution. Renowned for its exploration of lust, revenge and human malice, and still carrying a tremendous power to shock, its adaptations for screen and stage have made its central characters notorious for their sophisticated and ultimately tragic games of seduction and manipulation.

This book provides significant new insights into the Enlightenment in Portugal and its relationships with other European cultural movements using Eugénio dos Santos (1711–1760) as a common reference point. Eugénio dos Santos was a Portuguese architect and city planner who, among other projects, was responsible for the plans to rebuild Lisbon after the earthquake of 1st November 1755. His artistic and technical training, architectural production, aesthetic preferences and some of the books in his private library point to a person who embodied the transition between two moments in Portuguese culture, with their specific characteristics and particular reception of the practices and ideas that circulated among European intellectuals and practitioners. Over the 18 chapters of this volume, several specialists in different disciplinary areas discuss ideas, libraries, printed and handwritten documents, drawings, printing techniques, and architects, philosophers and writers of the 18th century, in order to offer a broad view of a time period closely associated with the construction of modernity.

The first in-depth look at Staël's political life and writings Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) is perhaps best known today as a novelist, literary critic, and outspoken and independent thinker. Yet she was also a prominent figure in politics during the French Revolution. Biancamaria Fontana sheds new light on this often overlooked aspect of Staël's life and work, bringing vividly to life her unique experience as a political actor in a world where women had no place. The banker's daughter who became one of Europe's best-connected intellectuals, Staël was an exceptionally talented woman who achieved a degree of public influence to which not even her wealth and privilege would normally have entitled her. During the Revolution, when the lives of so many around her were destroyed, she succeeded in carving out a unique path for herself and making her views heard, first by the powerful men around her, later by the European public at large. Fontana provides the first in-depth look at her substantial output of writings on the theory and practice of the exercise of power, setting in sharp relief the dimension of Staël's life that she cared most about—politics. She was fascinated by the nature of public opinion, and believed that viable political regimes were founded on public trust and popular consensus. Fontana shows how Staël's ideas were shaped by the remarkable times in which she lived, and argues that it is only through a consideration of her political insights that we can fully understand Staël's legacy and its enduring relevance for us today.