Pascal's Lettres provinciales

The first comprehensive study to appear in Engish of the controversial Lettres provinciales, Pascal's major polemical work, undertaken as a defence of Port-Royal and as an attack on the Society of Jesus. The author first analyzes in detail the substance and structure of the letters themselves, casting light in the process on the nature and function of polemic and on Pascal's mastery in the genre. Secondly, he examines the text in the light of other contemporary writing: in discussing the (mainly) Jesuit counter-polemic, he adduces a good deal of material not easily accessible to scholarly investigation, and thereby sets the Provinciales in the context of the broader polemical exchange; then, in exploring the links between the Provinciales and Pascal's Pensées, he demonstrates a closer connection between those two seminal works than has generally been recognized, and in so doing offers some insightinto the problematic relationship between polemics and apologetics. --Book jacket.