Enlightenment Invention of the Modern Self

Lafayette, La Princesse de Clèves, I (1x4)

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The aristocratic court culture in France at the end of the 17th century held a shrewd but narrow world-view. The pioneering novel La Princesse de Clèves by Mme. de Lafayette. Today's culture aspires to an ideal of truth-telling authenticity, but most 17th-century writers took for granted that we never can know the truth about our own motives.