Reforming French Culture ― Satire, Spiritual Alienation, and Connection to Strangers

Reforming French Culture is a ground-breaking work on the literary genre of Reformation satire--colloquial, obscene, scatological--designed to mock the excesses as well as the essence of the Roman Catholic rite and hierarchy. Enticingly, Hoffmann proposes that while romance, with its episodic, heroic narrative, is the literary genre of Counter-Reformation, satire is the genre of Reformation. This minor category of Renaissance French literature is an unstudied continent that plays a key role, not only in French literature, but also in French history, and in the evolution of French culture more generally. From this deceptively small focus, the volume opens up huge vistas: on the Reformation, on French history, and on the symbiosis of spirituality and estrangement to which it views modern French culture as heir.

Rather than using literature to illustrate history, or contextualizing literature through historical background, this book brings literary understanding (what satire is and what it does) to bear on historical understanding. Situated at the crossroads of religion, literature, and cultural history, it explores how France, in this period, became a culturally Protestant country while remaining confessionally Catholic.

George Hoffmann, Professor of French, University of Michigan

George Hoffmann is Professor of French at the University of Michigan in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. He is the author of Montaigne's Career (OUP, 1998) and several articles such as 'Was Montaigne a Good Friend?' in Men and Women Making Friends (Ashgate, 2015), 'Self-Assurance and Acting in the Essais' in Montaigne Studies (2014), and the Oxford Bibliographies Online entry for Montaigne. In addition, he has edited an issue devoted to Les Biographies de Montaigne in Montaigne Studies (2008) and contributed several articles to the Dictionnaire Montaigne, edited by Philippe Desan (Champion, 2007).