The essays in this volume place the history of ideas and of literature in early modern France within their social context. They include the author's pioneering and authoritative analyses as well as particular studies of popular revolts. An extensive introduction contrasts the author's methods with other recent approaches, including those of the annaliste school. The stress throughout these essays is on change and discontinuity rather than stability and tradition. Few historians have Professor Salmon's expertise in both intellectual and social history. This volume brings the two together in a manner that shows a lucid, well-crafted exposition of their intricate and overlapping relations.
Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Humanism, Stoicism, and Interest of State: 1. Cicero and Tacitus in sixteenth-century France; 2. Protestant jurists and theologians in early modern France: the family of Cappel; 3. French satire in the late sixteenth century; 4. Rohan and interest of state; Part II. Sovereignty, Resistance, and Christian obedience: 5. Bodin and the monarchomachs; 6. An alternative theory of popular resistance: Buchanan, Rossaeus, and Locke; 7. Gallicanism and Anglicanism in the age of the Counter-Reformation; Part III. Structures and Fissures: 8. Venality of office and popular sedition in seventeenth-century France; 9. Peasant revolt in Vivarais, 1575-1580; 10. The Paris Sixteen, 1584-1594: the social analysis of a revolutionary movement; 11. The Audijos revolt: provincial liberties and institutional rivalries under Louis XIV; Index.
