Persian Letters
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- John Davidson
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand) · 1 illegible passage, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~110,000 words · 499 passages
Cite this work
- APAMontesquieu. (n.d.). Persian Letters (John Davidson, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/montesquieu/persian-letters
- MLAMontesquieu. Persian Letters. Translated by John Davidson. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/montesquieu/persian-letters.
- ChicagoMontesquieu. Persian Letters. Translated by John Davidson. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/montesquieu/persian-letters.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The epistolary novel with which Montesquieu made his name in 1721, anonymously: two Persian travellers write from Paris about what they see there.
Context and history
The device is simple and lethal: to have France looked at by someone who takes nothing for granted. Usbek and Rica describe with polite bewilderment the king, the pope, the salons, fashion, the coffee-houses, the academies and religious customs, and the French reader suddenly sees himself as an exotic curiosity. Running alongside is the plot of Usbek's harem at Isfahan, which ends in tragedy and is where the book really raises the question of power and freedom. It was an immediate and scandalous success, and he had to publish it in Holland. The 'Persian letter' became a genre; much of the Enlightenment's machinery for criticising without appearing to criticise comes from here.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
certain in their unbelief as Bossuet w'as in his faith, who made a byword of the eight years from the death of Louis XIV. to his successor’s assumption of power. Grown sanctimonious in his old age, Louis XIV. had made his subjects hypocrites. At his death the boast of vice succeeded to ostentatious devotion ; the court like one man changed from Tartuffe into Don Juan. All things were discussed, examined, and torn to shreds. The intestine quarrels of the Church gave INTRODUCTION scoffers the opportunity they would have made. Dubois debauched politics ; Law, finance ; and the populace debauched themselves : for gaming, which had before been confined to people of quality, became the common amusement. Incest, too, was quite h la mode ; and those who could not be in the height of the fashion had to be satisfied with lesser vices. The autocratic rule of the Grand Monarqne gave place to the laissez-aller of Philip of Orleans, the " unbelieving Regent.” llope, desire, speculation, knew no bounds, all things in heaven above and ill the earth beneath having become common and unclean. It is this period that is reflected and criticised in the " Persian Letters.” V