1.3. Literature and history
To end this first forum literally, Colas Duflo invites you in the following videos to examine, with the help of three major works, how three writers of the century critically approached their immediate political history:
- Les Aventures de Télémaque, of Fénelon (a grand educational fiction written in 1699), represent the first literary review of Louis XIV’s politics and very quickly become a model for all of the Enlightenment’s literature.
- The Lettres persanes, an epistolary novel published anonymously by Montesquieu in 1721, combines exotic fiction, satirical description, historical and political reflection on its contemporary history.
- The Mémoires of Saint-Simon, a somewhat frightening monument in French literature, will be presented and illuminated in an interview with Marc Hersant.
🎞️ The Adventures of Telemachus by Fenelon
📥 Transcript of the video in English (PDF)
🎞️ Montesquieu’s Persian Letters
📥 Transcript of the video in English (PDF)