Les Caractères

5.60 €

Author:  Jean de la Bruyère

Publishing House : Livre de Poche, LGF

Publication Date : September 1976

Description :The first half of his life was spent preparing a book, the second half correcting and amending it. Like Montaigne, and perhaps a little more than him, La Bruyère is indeed the man of a single book, and this book is that of a life. Between the draft and the last state revised by the author – on which the present edition is based -, the renewed encouragements of a delighted public which does not seem to have resented La Bruyère for having so severely chastised him.It is because Les Caractères is first of all the masterpiece of a genre practiced since Antiquity, the portrait, and of a vein, moral literature, in which the Grand Siècle could not but recognize itself and fulfill itself. Under Louis XIV, one is willingly attached to the notations, these marks where passions are discovered and nothing interests more than passions. In a word, where we could believe that La Bruyère was fixing images, he was in truth trying to give us to read them. One does not know indeed what solicits us more: what La Bruyère looks at or the way he looks at it.

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