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Acknowledgments I would like to thank all the people who helped me, directly and indirectly, with the writing of this book. My warmest . thanks go to my colleagues and friends Larry Bongie and Ralph Sarkonak, who read the manuscript with great care and provided much-needed criticism and suggestions. I would also like to thank Harold Knutson, who read an earlier version of the manuscript. Research assistants Susan Bree and Kathleen Elliott . cheerfully spent long hours gathering material for this volume. Over. the years, many people have helped to spark and to sustain my interest in La Rochefoucauld. I would particularly like to thank Olivier Abrioux, whose enthusiasm for seventeenth -century French literature still inspi~es me, and former students Charlotte Jull, Denis Combet, and Ellen Brown,who share my enduring interest in the moralistes. I would liketo thank the anonymous readers ofPurdue Studies in Romance Literatures, who made many useful suggestions on the styIe and the format. of this book. I wish to thank the editors ofthe Archivfur das Studium der neueren Sprachen und 'Literaturen for permission to publish, as part of Chapter Two, a reworked version of my article "La Rochefoucauld and the Baroque Concept ofInconstance" (228.2 [1991]: 311-20). My thanks. also to Floyd St.-Clair and David Watmough, whose caring and encouragement helped me through my sabbatical , when most of this book was written, and to Barbara and David Lemon, for their interestin my work. I would like to express special.thank~tomy friend lo-Ann McEachern, an etre vrai whose pi,actical advice and moral support have been invaluable to me. . Finally, I would'like to express my thanks to Shabe Lohrasbe. And to my wife, Debbie, who has given me her love and support for more than two decades. '. xiii -?fi/~ Frontispieceofthe early editions oftheMaximes (reprinted from the Album of the Grands'Ecrivains de la France edi. 'tion of the complete works). ...

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