This book analyses the use of the crucial concept of 'taste' in the works of five major seventeenth-century French authors, M r , Saint Evremond, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruy re and Boileau. It combines close readings of important texts with a thoroughgoing political analysis of seventeenth-century French society in terms of class and gender. Dr Moriarty shows that far from being timeless and universal, the term 'taste' is culture-specific, shifting...