Sacred and Secular Agency in Early Modern France: Fragments of Religion

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The opposition between 'religion' and 'modernity' has long held the status of a self-evident truth. Recently, however, there has been a growing realization that religion has not died out and may be more compatible with modern society than previously assumed.This development is particularly striking in France where lacit has long been the official doctrine. How did religion become opposed to the secular and modern If distinctions between sacred and secular are less adequate than commonly believed, how do these two categories interactAddressing these questions, this book explores the persistence of religious categories on the cultural landscape of early modern France. France was the birthplace of Europe's first secular state and the centre of two movements considered indispensable to secularization - the Enlightenment and Revolution of 1789. As such France is vital for understanding how religious antecedents informed modern political institutions and ideals. By uncovering the role of religion in shaping categories most often associated with modernity this book offers a new perspective on the master narrative of secularization.

Reviews

This is an exciting and importantbook which overturns a series of platitudes about both earlymodernity and France today. It marks a timely intervention in the field ofFrench studies and more broadly in historical debates about secularization.Perovic's collection makes an invigorating and illuminating contributionto early modern studies, but more importantly it proposes that we think aboutthe relation between early and late modernity in a new way. -- Dr Katherine Ibbett, Department of French at University College London, UK
A stimulating, timely, and admirably interdisciplinary intervention in the ongoing debates concerning the secularizing evolution from the Renaissance to the Revolution, this volume will keenly interest and amply reward scholars and students from across a wide range of early-modern fields. -- Dr Larry Norman, Professor of French Literature, Theatre and Performance Studies at University of Chicago, USA and author of The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France (Chicago University Press)

Author Bio

Sanja Perovic is Lecturer in the French Department, King's College London, UK.