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Article: Just Words: Moralism and Metalanguage in Twentieth-Century French Fiction.(Review)
- Article from:
- The Modern Language Review
- Article date:
- January 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Modern Humanities Research Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Just Words: Moralism and Metalanguage in Twentieth-Century French Fiction. By ROBERT W. GREENE. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 1993. 188 pp.
If the twin towers of twentieth-century French literature are existentialist thought and the revaluation of language in its relation to reality and the human consciousness, then where did it all begin? Robert Greene champions Chamfort, the 'moralist of the Revolution', whose historically minded pen overwrote the universalism of his predecessors, Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, and La Bruyere. Indeed, Beckett so admired Chamfort's maxims that he converted several of them into poems. Greene argues that the ...