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The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Early Modern Europe: Encounters with a Certain Something

by Richard Scholar
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Current price ₹18,903.00
Original price ₹22,684.00
Original price ₹22,684.00
Original price ₹22,684.00
(-17%)
₹18,903.00
Current price ₹18,903.00

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Book cover type: Hardcover
  • ISBN13: 9780199274406
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: OUP Oxford
  • Publisher Imprint: OUP Oxford
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 350
  • Original Price: GBP 132.5
  • Language: English
  • Edition: N/A
  • Item Weight: 590 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

What is the je-ne-sais-quoi, if it is indeed something at all, and how can it be put into words? In addressing these questions, Richard Scholar offers the first full-length study of the je-ne-sais-quoi and its fortunes in early modern Europe. He examines the expression's rise and fall as a noun and as a topic of philosophical and literary debate, its cluster of meanings, and the scattered traces of its "pre-history." Placing major writers of the period such as Montaigne, Shakespeare, Descartes, Corneille, and Pascal alongside some of their lesser-known contemporaries, Scholar argues that the je-ne-sais-quoi serves above all to trace a series of first-person encounters with a certain something as difficult to explain as its effects are intense, and which can be expressed only by being expressed differently. He shows how the je-ne-sais-quoi comes to express that certain something in the early modern period, and suggests that it remains capable of doing so today.

Richard Scholar is a Fellow & Tutor in French, Oriel College, Oxford. He was previously a Lecturer in French at the University of Durham and the Astor Junior Research Fellow of New College, Oxford.

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