The Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French Literature

ISBN-13: 9780748645152 / Angielski / Twarda / 2011 / 240 str.

John D. Lyons

Opis

How the classical and medieval conceptions of Fortune shifted to the modern notion of chanceIs chance nothing more than a projection of human desire on to the world? In this fascinating new study, John Lyons argues that the idea of chance assumed new vigour in the late Renaissance, when converging philosophical and literary currents demystified the powerful concept of Fortune, sensitizing writers to the relationship between human desire and the world's apparent randomness. Up to now, the story of chance has been written by historians of mathematical thought and has focused on calculation, probability and gambling. Lyons, by contrast, highlights the ethical, aesthetic and even erotic aspects of chance. He offers detailed readings of the works of major French authors - Montaigne, Corneille, Lafayette, Scudery, Pascal, Racine, Bossuet, and La Bruyere.
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Spis treści

Preface: The Phantom of Chance; Starting in the middle of things; The end of fortune and the rise of chance; Acknowledgements; Series Editor's Foreword; Introduction; The tradition of chance; Aristotle and the third type of event; Fortuna and casus; Boethius and the wheel of fortune; Machiavelli and the dissolution of fortune; Montaigne and the sceptical challenge; 1. Fortune, Mistress of Events: Corneille and the Poetics of Tragedy; Chance as cornerstone of poetics; Clitandre, and the poetics of gratuity; Le Cid and the management of chance; Miracles in everyday life; 2. God in a World of Chance: Pascal's Pensées and Lettres provinciales; The Random human condition; From probability to frequency in the Provinciales; The coming of the Messiah was not an effect of chance; When the game is over; 3. From Chance Events to Improbable Actions: Lafayette and the Novel; The shipwreck of romance; Everyday encounters; Silent Chance; 4. The God of Suspense: Bossuet's providential history and Racine's Athalie; God's anamorphic history; Racine's tragedy of errors; 5. An Accidental World: La Bruyère's Caractères; The Heart; Occasion; Love; Machines; Fashion; Index.