(print) xx, 242 p. ; 24 cm

Acknowledgments ix -- Publications of Hugh M. Davidson x -- Introduction xv -- I. LITERARY THEORY -- Jean Mesnard Vraie et fausse beaute dans Pesthetique au dix-septieme siecle 3 -- Robert Garapon Sur le sens du mot "raison" au dix-septieme siecle 34 -- H. Gaston Hall Desmarets's "L'Art de la poesie" : Poetics or Politics? 45 -- II. THEATER -- Odette de Mourgues Poetry and the Comic-A Subtle Partnership 65 -- Terence Cave Corneille, Oedipus, Racine 82 -- Judd D. Hubert A Theatrical Reading of Cinna 101 -- Marie-Odile Sweetser "Docere et delectare" : Richesses de l'Avare 110 -- III. FICTION -- Charles G. S. Williams Doubling and Omission in the Text of Anne Ferrand/Belise 123 -- IV. THE LYRIC -- Jules Brody La Fontaine, Les Vautours et les pigeons (VII, 8) : An Intertextual Reading 143 -- Robert T. Corum, Jr. Generic Modulation in Consolations by Malherbe, Tristan PHermite, and Theophile de Viau 161 -- V. THE MORALISTS -- John D. Lyons Camera Obscura : Image and Imagination in Descartes's Meditations 179 -- Peter Bayley A Reading of the First Liasse 196 -- Roland A. Champagne Toward a Semiotics of Blaise Pascal's Pensees : A Model for Geometrical and Rhetorical Persuasions 208 -- Bruce H. Davis Resisting the Pull : Pierre Nicole on the Inclination to Sin 217 -- Contributors 235 -- Index 237