Death and Tenses - Posthumous Presence in Early Modern France (Paperback)

In what tense should we refer to the dead? The question has long been asked, from Cicero to Julian Barnes. Answering it is partly a matter of grammar and stylistic convention. But the hesitation, annoyance, and even distress that can be caused by the "wrong" tense suggests that more may be at stake-our very relation to the dead. This book, the first to test that hypothesis, investigates how tenses were used in sixteenth and early seventeenth-century France (especially in French but also in Latin) to refer to dead friends, lovers, family members, enemies, colleagues, writers, officials, kings and queens of recent times, and also to those who had died long before, whether Christ, the saints, or the ancient Greeks and Romans who posthumously filled the minds of Renaissance humanists. Did tenses refer to the dead in ways that contributed to granting them differing degrees of presence (and absence)? Did tenses communicate dimensions of posthumous presence (and absence) that partly eluded more concept-based affirmations? The investigation ranges from funerary and devotional writing to Eucharistic theology, from poetry to humanist paratexts, from Rabelais's prose fiction to Montaigne's Essais. Primarily a work of literary and cultural history, it also draws on early modern grammatical thought and on modern linguistics (with its concept of aspect and its questioning of "tense"), while arguing that neither can fully explain the phenomena studied. The book briefly compares early modern usage with tendencies in modern French and English in the West, asking whether changes in belief about posthumous survival have been accompanied by changes in tense-use.

General

Imprint:	Oxford UniversityPress
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	September 2020
Authors:	Neil Kenny (All Souls College, University of Oxford)
Dimensions:	234 x 156 x 170mm (L x W x H)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	304
ISBN-13:	978-0-19-883115-0
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Historical & comparative linguistics > General Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 16th to 18th centuries Books > Humanities > History > World history > 1500 to 1750 Books > Humanities > History > European history > General Books > History > European history > General Books > History > World history > 1500 to 1750 Promotions
LSN:	0-19-883115-3
Barcode:	9780198831150

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