Season 14 · 28 Aug 2026From Copernicus to Lenin: Revolution!- 1:11:55The Princess of ClèvesOne learns more about love in this novel than in all of cognitivism.
Appears in 9 videos · 9 passages.
Dominique Pagani discusses Madame de La Fayette almost entirely through The Princess of Clèves, which he takes as an example of a historically determined way of loving. He comes back to it from 2014 to 2026 with the same formula: this novel would be impossible in the age of Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon man, which shows that love has a history and that love relationships do not stem from a fixed nature123. He also uses the novel against naturalistic explanations: one cannot move from chemical equations to the reason of a romantic love4, and one learns more about love from this book than from all of cognitivism5. He also stresses its social background: the novel's first encounter presupposes a code of aristocratic high society6, in an age when social worlds did not interpenetrate7. Finally, he mentions the novel as a comparative literature topic for the agrégation8.
Summary produced automatically from 9 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.
Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, Comtesse de La Fayette (baptized 18 March 1634 – 25 May 1693), better known as Madame de La Fayette, was a French writer; she authored La Princesse de Clèves, France's first historical novel and one of the earliest novels in literature.
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