Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu, Lettres persanes [Persian Letters]

Haskins Gonthier Ursula (University of Birmingham)

Ed. by Tim Unwin, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.04: French Writing and Culture: Eighteenth-Century and the Enlightenment, 1700-1800.
Vol. editors: Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Jenny Mander (University of Cambridge), Síofra Pierse (University College Dublin), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1721

Places

France (Country of Origin)
Netherlands (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Epistolary
Novel

Resources

The Lettres persanes [Persian Letters], the first published work by the French Enlightenment philosopher and political theorist Montesquieu, appeared in Amsterdam in 1721. That the work was published anonymously outside France and without the official authorisation of the French censors is a mark of its subversive and controversial content, much of which is, however, masked by the author’s masterful use of wit, irony and allusion. The Lettres persanes is an epistolary novel which in its final edition includes 161 letters (the first edition contained 150). These make up the correspondence of two Persian travellers, Usbek and Rica, who leave their home in Ispahan in 1711 and journey to France, where they stay until 1…

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2000 words

Citation: Ursula, Haskins Gonthier. "Lettres persanes". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 March 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3978, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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