Cornell UP, 2018. ISBN: 978-1501729423; also available for Kindle and other e-formats. 252p. hb $57.95.
The press offers a discount of 30% using the code 09FLYER (US – at cornellpress.cornell.edu / Canada email info@codasat.com) or CS09FLYER (UK, Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa – at combinedacademic.co.uk).
In The Perraults, Oded Rabinovitch takes the fascinating eponymous literary and scientific family as an entry point into the complex and rapidly changing world of early modern France. Today, the Perraults are best remembered for their canonical fairy tales, such as "Cinderella" and "Puss in Boots," most often attributed to Charles Perrault, one of the brothers. While the writing of fairy tales may seem a frivolous enterprise, it was, in fact, linked to the cultural revolution of the seventeenth century, which paved the way for the scientific revolution, the rise of "national literatures," and the early Enlightenment. Rabinovitch argues that kinship networks played a crucial, yet unexamined, role in shaping the cultural and intellectual ferment of the day, which in turn shaped kinship and the social history of the family.
Through skillful reconstruction of the Perraults’ careers and networks, Rabinovitch portrays the world of letters as a means of social mobility. He complicates our understanding of prominent institutions, such as the Academy of Sciences, Versailles, and the salons, as well as the very notions of authorship and court capitalism. The Perraults shows us that institutions were not simply rigid entities, embodying or defining intellectual or literary styles such as Cartesianism, empiricism, or the purity of the French language. Rather, they emerge as nodes that connect actors, intellectual projects, family strategies, and practices of writing.
“This engaging portrait shows how central the Perraults were to their cultural firmament. It takes us deep into Louis XIV's France at the highest levels, but it does so by breaking down such unwieldly categories like court and society, demonstrating the porous byways of intellectual production and cultural transmission. There is no book quite like this one.”
- Robert A. Schneider, Indiana University Bloomington
“Through the lens of a remarkable family in the age of Louis XIV, Rabinovitch examines literary and scientific activities as strategies for social and political advancement. His extensive research and subtle analyses offer fascinating new insight into the cultural efflorescence of the Grand Siècle.”
- Ann Blair, Harvard University, author of Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age
“Tracing the networks and dynastic ambitions of the Perrault brothers, this innovative book offers us new ways to think about authorship and intellectual life in the culture of absolutism. It will be of great interest to students of early modern France.”
- Nicholas Dew, McGill University, author of Orientalism in Louis XIV’s France
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140108650360
Source: H-France
