Yale French Studies, Number 94: Libertinage and Modernity

by Catherine Cusset (Editor)

This book is an interdisciplinary attempt to redefine libertinage as an eighteenth-century artistic and literary movement primarily concerned with seduction and sexual desire. The first part of the volume examines libertinage from an ethical perspective and includes syntheses that emphasize the mythical and utopian aspects of libertine desire. The second part explores the aesthetic stakes of libertinage and contains case studies that focus on the literary and artistic strategies of libertinage.

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 11, 1999

About the author

Catherine Cusset was born in Paris in 1963. A graduate of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and agrégée in classics, she got a Ph.D in Paris and another one at Yale, and she taught 18th-century French literature at Yale for 12 years. She is the author of ten novels published by Gallimard between 1990 and 2013, among which En toute innocence, Le problème avec Jane (finalist for Medicis prize and Grand Prix littéraire des lectrices d’Elle 2000), La haine de la famille, Confessions d’une radine, Un brillant avenir (Prix Goncourt des lycéens 2008) and Indigo. She is translated into 15 languages. The Story of Jane was published by Simon and Shuster in 2001. After 20 years in the States, Catherine Cusset recently moved to London with her American husband and daughter.