La curiosité pour l’islam dans l’oeuvre de François de Belleforest
Curiosity for Islam in Belleforest’s Works

Summary/Abstract: The importance of the oriental theme in François de Belleforest’s works is well known. Here we study strictly religious matters (which may seem questionable, but one aim of our paper is to define points of contact or separation between religious and ethnic identities). How is the Muslim religion represented in the Histoire universelle, in the Cosmographie universelle and the Histoires tragiques? These three texts, or series of texts, reveal an intellectual interest, and even an aesthetic interest, for Islam. Of course, this interest cannot be said openly. We highlight the obstacles Belleforest encounters and the way he circumvents them. Strategies of dissimulation are worthy of scrutiny, because they let emerge an additional curiosity for Islam: a curiosity of a moral order, especially perceptible in fiction.

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