The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Early Modern Europe: Encounters with a Certain Something

By Richard Scholar

What is the je-ne-sais-quoi, if it is indeed something at all, and how can it be put into words? In addressing these questions, Richard Scholar offers the first full-length study of the je-ne-sais-quoi and its fortunes in early modern Europe. He examines the expression's rise and fall as a noun and as a topic of philosophical and literary debate, its cluster of meanings, and the scattered traces of its "pre-history." Placing major writers of the period such as Montaigne, Shakespeare, Descartes, Corneille, and Pascal alongside some of their lesser-known contemporaries, Scholar argues that the je-ne-sais-quoi serves above all to trace a series of first-person encounters with a certain something as difficult to explain as its effects are intense, and which can be expressed only by being expressed differently. He shows how the je-ne-sais-quoi comes to express that certain something in the early modern period, and suggests that it remains capable of doing so today.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199274401
• ISBN13: 9780199274406
• Release Date: December 2005
• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Length: 350 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.5"