Michael G. Paulson

This book focuses on Henry IV of France as he is presented in selected works by Voltaire, Alfred de Vigny, Alexandre Dumas père, and George Sand. The book depicts King Henry from his earliest years until his assassination, and shows how Henry was a dominant figure in life and an overwhelming figure as a memory in the minds of his descendants and his subjects. Special mention is made of the St. Bartholomew’s Day’s Massacre, the conquest of the throne, the Edict of Nantes, the religious conversions, and the ladies and multiple offspring of King Henry. This book will be of interest to students of both nineteenth-century French literature and sixteenth-century French history courses, as a text or as a supplement.

"Facets of a Princess" is a novel approach to Madame de La Fayette's "La Princesse de Cleves." Unlike previous critical studies, "Facets" does not limit its focus to a single critical approach, but instead examines the novel from political, historical, extreme feminist, and religious perspectives. This multifaceted scope provides the reader with a new understanding and appreciation of the seventeenth-century work and should encourage further scholarly investigation into the life and works of Madame de La Fayette."

This present study takes a new look at the essayist Michel de Montaigne and the philosopher Rene Descartes and attempts to show a new interrelationship between the two. Previous studies have linked the latter's Discours de la mÈthode to the Essais and have noted general similarities, but no major study to date has examined the pair from the standpoint of Descartes' TraitÈ des passions and Montaigne's Essais.