French Literature Reviews - 2026

A. Gimaret, Extraordinaire et ordinaire des Croix. Les représentations du corps souffrant 1580-1650
Medieval and Renaissance Studies

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Antoinette Gimaret, Extraordinaire et ordinaire des Croix. Les représentations du corps souffrant 1580-1650

Paris: Honoré Champion, coll. "Bibliothèque littéraire de la Renaissance", 2011.

EAN 9782745321084.

896 p.

160 EUR.

Publisher's overview:

At the end of the Renaissance, representations of the suffering body cannot be reduced merely to the exaltation of Calvary, even though Christian discourse strives, through a logic of Imitatio Christi, to convert all pain into a chosen Passion. They also correspond to a new distribution established between the ordinary and the extraordinary, the zealous sufferings of the martyr and the modest pain of the devout. This fosters a fresh perspective on the body in its everyday reality and allows every individual to claim their personal suffering as a valid counterpart. It is precisely this process of particularization and diversification in the representation of suffering that this study seeks to uncover.

A former student of the École Normale Supérieure, holder of the agrégation in Modern Letters, and Ph.D. in Literature, Antoinette Gimaret is Associate Professor of 17th-century Literature at the University of Limoges. Her research focuses on bodily representations and the connections between literature, spirituality, and historiography.

This scholarly monograph situates itself firmly within early modern literary and religious studies, examining the transition from collective sacred iconography to individual bodily experiences between 1580 and 1650. By engaging with the intellectual and spiritual frameworks of the late Renaissance and early seventeenth century, the author explores how Christian discourse intersected with shifting cultural perceptions of pain. The book bridges literary analysis and historical anthropology, offering a detailed investigation into how texts from this period renegotiated the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, the heroic and the mundane.

Researchers and students focusing on seventeenth-century French literature, cultural history, and the history of mentalities will find this study particularly valuable. It addresses fundamental questions regarding how historical subjects perceived their physical existence and articulated personal distress within dominant theological structures. By shedding light on the mechanics of bodily representation in early modern texts, the work serves as an essential resource for understanding the long-term evolution of subjectivity and the literary expression of human vulnerability before the classical age.