{"product_id":"the-je-ne-sais-quoi-in-early-modern-europe-encounters-with-a-certain-something-9780199274406","title":"The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Early Modern Europe: Encounters with a Certain Something","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Richard Scholar\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: OUP Oxford\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: OUP Oxford\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat is the \u003cem\u003eje-ne-sais-quoi\u003c\/em\u003e, 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 \u003cem\u003eje-ne-sais-quoi\u003c\/em\u003e 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 \u003cem\u003eje-ne-sais-quoi\u003c\/em\u003e 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 \u003cem\u003eje-ne-sais-quoi\u003c\/em\u003e comes to express that certain something in the early modern period, and suggests that it remains capable of doing so today.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"OUP Oxford","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47613423845527,"sku":"9780199274406","price":18903.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9780199274406.webp?v=1775085077","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/the-je-ne-sais-quoi-in-early-modern-europe-encounters-with-a-certain-something-9780199274406","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}