Du jansénisme au libéralisme. Itinéraires de quelques abbés du siècle

This article studies a peculiar 18th-century literary genre, the fencing manual, in which French masters tried to set out the pedagogy of crossing swords. Thus these manuals provide an elegant savoir-vivre in which the salute, respect for the rules and the way of holding the weapon are signs of distinction. However, reading them in a different way, we can see that the century and its élites were more violent than one might think. The manuals also teach the reader to kill the enemy correctly cin serious cases3 ; here illustrations accompanying the more prudent written text show clearly homicidal fencing. In a century when the Cartesian paradigm of reason was undermined, a more instinctive and resolutely deadly fencing is transformed by including the sensation of touch. Here the civilising process becomes an art of slaying one's neighbour delicately and ferociously.Cottret Monique. Du jansénisme au libéralisme. Itinéraires de quelques abbés du siècle. In: Dix-huitième Siècle, n°34, 2002. Christianisme et Lumières, sous la direction de Sylviane Albertan-Coppola et Antony McKenna. pp. 53-66