Book description
Alexandre Beljame was virtually the founder of the English Studies which now flourish in French Universities. He himself was first holder of the Chair of English at the Sorbonne from 1902 to his death in 1907.
This work, first published in 1881, is a classic. It is an essential source book for the literature and social history of the period and in its form and method a model of how to consider writers in relation to the life of their times. The period under review is one of crucial interest, for it witnessed a fundamental change in the status of the writer, corresponding with the final emergence of society from the medieval into the modern phase.
This book is now offered in English to the English reading public in the belief that for erudition an clarity, liveliness and wit, it has not yet its equal in the literature on the subject.
