The art of the Persian letters : unlocking Montesquieu's "secret chain"
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The art of the Persian letters : unlocking Montesquieu's "secret chain"
University of Delaware Press, c2005
Available at 1 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 282-283) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Some thirty years after the initial publication of Montesquieu's "Persian Letters" in 1721, the author hinted at the presence of "a secret, and somehow unnoticed, chain" tying together this entertaining, insightful, yet disparate collection of fictional letters to and from two Persian travellers in France. Ever since Montesquieu's subtle hint, readers have tried to identify the chain, but the riddle has resisted solution. The reason may be that no one has actually looked for a hidden chain - composed of separate links - but instead for a unifying theme. In "The Art of the Persian Letters," Randolph Runyon takes the chain metaphor seriously, showing that the chain is not thematic but linguistic and structural, as each letter is linked to its neighbors on either side by echoing words and situations despite their different contexts. Montesquieu's epistolary novel emerges as a delightfully self-referential work of art, full of hidden allusions to their persistently doubling structure. Randolph Paul Runyon is Professor of French at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
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