Love and love of self in early modern French writing

Abstract This is the text of a lecture given in March 2012 at Queen Mary, University of London, in honour of the late Malcolm Bowie. The lecture explores the portrayal of love in French writing (fiction, drama, and moral reflection) of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and especially the way in which love for another person is represented as stimulated and nourished by love of one’s self. The text has not been altered from the original lecture format. A list of works cited follows.