Classics Incorporated

Download or read book Classics Incorporated written by Elise Noël McMahon and published by Summa Publications, Inc.. This book was released on 1998 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this work Professor McMahon takes a new approach to interpreting the most canonized century in French literature. By viewing literature as essentially a cultural practice, she offers an unconventional reading of canonical masterpieces of the era (Corneille's Medee, Moliere's La Bourgeois gentilhomme, Racine's Phedre, and La Fontaine's Fables) to the extent that these works are compared to "non-literary" texts which focus on the human body. "Classics Incorporated" draws on extensive archival research into such unfamiliar historical sources as cookbooks, shopping guides, treatises on medicine and monstrosity, and dance manuals. Because of this insistence on treating literature as part of a given culture and historicising texts in a novel manner, "Classics Incorporated" stands apart as a critical study that can appeal to a diverse audience: those who are interested in cultural criticism, popular culture, cultural history, and critical theory alike.