Libertine Culture in Pre-Revolutionary France: 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses' in Historical Perspective
Humanities
History
I have often felt, when reading pre-Modernist novels, that I am missing a great deal of context and meaning in my ignorance of the conditions of its writing. It is the readers' job to investigate what the novel meant to its author, and what it means, and has meant, to readers. This last-- the potential relevance of a work of art through time-- inspired me to describe the historical, political and literary context of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Most novelists write and have written for their contemporaries, and don't bother to explain things that they would consider obvious, so that generally sympathetic characters do inexplicable things like falling in love with thirteen-year-old girls or keeping serfs or dueling with pistols, while the readers furrow their brows or perhaps lose a degree of empathy over a matter that the author would have considered perfectly obvious and expected. It is, therefore, the reader's responsibility to consider the novel as it was seen at the time of its writing, and I have attempted to synthesize several approaches towards that end.
