Representing Avarice in Late Renaissance France

Why did people talk so much about avarice in late Renaissance France, nearly a century before Molière''s famous comedy, L''Avare? As wars and economic crises ravaged France on the threshold of modernity, avarice was said to be flourishing as never before. Yet by the late sixteenth century, a number of French writers would argue that in some contexts, avaricious behaviour was not straightforwardly ...