Béatrice Guion

Fellowship 2013

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Béatrice Guion, former student of the École Normale Supérieure and agrégée in Classics,  is professor of 17th-century French literature at the University of Strasbourg, and director of the research group EA 1337 (« Configurations littéraires »). She is head of « Colloques, Congrès et Conférences (le classicisme) » and « Mémoires, journaux, correspondances (XVIIe siècle) » collections of the publisher Champion. She is a member of the scientific and advisory board of the Revue française d'histoire des idées politiques and of the Chroniques de Port-Royal. From 2004 to 2009 she was Honorary Secretary of the Société d'Étude du XVIIe siècle. She won in 2010 the Pierre-Georges Castex award (Académie des sciences morales et politiques).

Her research and publications focus mainly on religious literature (namely Port-Royal and Bossuet), on French moralists, on rhetorical and aesthetic thought in the 17th- and early 18th-century, and on the writing of history in early modern Europe. She is the author of two books : Pierre Nicole moraliste (Paris, Champion, 2002) and Du bon usage de l'histoire : histoire, morale et politique à l'âge classique (Paris, Champion, 2008), and of two critical editions : Pierre Nicole, La Vraie Beauté et son fantôme, et autres textes d’esthétique (Paris, Champion, 1996) ; Antoine Houdar de La Motte, Textes critiques. Les raisons du sentiment, with Fr. Gevrey (Paris, Champion, 2002). She co-authored Bossuet (Paris, PUPS, 2008). She was the editor of a special issue of the Revue française d'histoire des idées politiques on Langues et nations (XIIIe-XVIIIe siècles), n° 36, 2012 ; and co-editor, with Cl. Poulouin, of a special issue of XVIIe siècle entitled Faire lire l'histoire (n° 246, janvier-mars 2010).

Bossuet writer, intellectual and political thinker in the context of his time

USIAS Fellows: Gérard Ferreyrolles, Béatrice Guion and Hans-Christian Günther

The French 17th century, although it is one of the most interesting periods in European history and a peak of European culture, is very much in the background of public attention. Scholarly research concentrates mainly on two towering figures, Descartes and Pascal.

It follows that Bossuet's momentous work has not yet received all the attention it deserves, although he is a thinker of considerable ability and influence, in religious, historical, philosophical and political matters, as well as one of France’s greatest prose stylists.

This project intends to offer a crucial contribution to a more complete and thorough understanding of his work, and therefore of the period as a whole. Bossuet will be studied in regard to sources and precursors, and in the context of his time, not only inside, but also outside France. This study will be led in an interdisciplinary perspective, gathering specialists of literature and rhetoric, but also scholars who specialize in history, philosophy, and theology.