This collection of essays aims to measure the minimum scope for interpretation, with reference to texts produced under absolute constraints: those governing the trials of the Spanish Inquisition, as well as trials for witchcraft and libertinage, in polemical writings during the French wars of religion, or in the words of common law convicts in Italy and England.
Written by ten specialists in Early Modern literature and edited by Anne Duprat, these studies examine the violence inflicted on certain texts via the act of interpretation, and the means of resistance used in response. The essays illustrate how the violence of interpretation can also create the conditions necessary for the text to take on meaning.
Anne Duprat is a Professor of Comparative Literature. Specialized in the theory of fiction, she has published several monographies and multi-authored essays on Early Modern European Literature, as well as literary translations from Italian, Latin, English and Spanish.
All interested in Early Modern texts, in the relationship between Literature and History, in the theory of interpretation and in a textual and historical approach to the concept of violence.