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Eighteenth-Century French Theatre as Medium for the Enlightenment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Extract
Despite the great dramatists of the preceding century—Corneille, Racine and Molière—the 18th century is often considered the great age of French theatre. Obviously “the great age” should not be understood in the usual literary history sense as the “classical age”, for the structures and the content of French dramas originating in the 18th century did not have normative effects on the dramatic production of the centuries that followed. Nevertheless, we are doubly right in using the term “the great age” for French theatre of this period. On the one hand, from the viewpoint of the history of theatre, because certain dramatic techniques originating toward the middle of the 18th century have, down to our own times, influenced theatre so decisively and have become so natural that they form true hermeneutical barriers to the interpretation of plays from earlier epochs. And secondly from the viewpoint of social history, for theatre attendance at that time was indissolubly linked to the everyday life—or at least to holidays and festive occasions—of various social levels in France. As a result we can no doubt consider the theatre as the decisive center of critical knowledge, the gradual transmission of which is at the very heart of the process of the Enlightenment.
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- Copyright © 1986 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 See for example Maurice Descotes, Le public de théâtre et son histoire, P.U.F., 1964, p. 173.
2 See Wolfgang Iser, "Akte des Fingierens", Funktionen des Fiktiven, edited by W. Iser and Dieter Heinrich, Munich, Fink, 1981 (=Poetik und Hermeneutik 10).
3 This survey, which seeks to determine pragmatically the identity of the theatre as means of communication, is based on results of a seminar on "dramatic texts and the staging of plays", held in Bochum during the winter semester 1979-80.
4 For this definition of the expression "communication context", see H.U. Gumbrecht, Funktionen parlamentarischer Rhetorik in der Französischen Revolution. Vorstudien zur Entwicklung einer historischen Textpragmatik, Munich, Fink, 1978, p. 10-13.
5 From Henri Lagrave, Le théâtre et le public à Paris de 1715 à 1750, Klincksieck, 1972, p. 193 ff.
6 Ibid, p. 235.
7 Jean Quéniart, Culture et société urbaines dans la France de l'Ouest au XVIIIe siècle, Klincksieck, 1979, p. 504.
8 A large part of the historical data presented in the following pages is taken from the Introduction to the "Pléiade" edition, for which Jacques Truchet was responsible, of Théâtre du XVIIIe siècle, vol. I, Gallimard, 1972, p. XV-LIX.
9 See for example Lagrave, op. cit., (note 5), p. 68.
10 See the especially convincing functional historical interpretation of classical French tragedy proposed by Manfred Fuhrmann: Einführung in die antike Dichtungstheorie, Darmstadt, Wiss. Buchges., 1973, p. 236-250.
11 W. Iser, Die Appellstruktur der Texte. Unbestimmtheit als Wirkungsbedingung literarischer Prosa, Constance, Universitätsverl., 1970, 3rd ed., 1972.
12 "Theaterdebatten in der französischen Aufklärung", Theater und Aufklärung. Dokumentation zur Aesthetik des französischen Theaters im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. by Renate Petermann and Peter-Volker Springborn, DDR-Berlin/Munich, Hanser, 1979, p. 15.
13 Reinhart Koselleck, Kritik und Krise. Ein Beitrag zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt, Freiburg/ Munich, Alber, 1959, reprinted Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1973. Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, Darmstadt/ Neuwied, Luchterhand, 1962, 9th edition, 1978.
14 Here I am drawing widely from the book by Roland Galle, Tragödie und Aufklärung. Zum Funktionswandel des Tragischen zwischen Racine und Büchner, Stuttgart, Klett, 1976.
15 See H.U. Gumbrecht, "Die dramenschliessende Sprachhandlung im aristotelischen Theater und ihre Problematisierung bei Marivaux", Poetica 8, 1976, p. 376-379.
16 On the comic manipulation of language in Marivaux, see Rainer Warning, "Komik und Komödie als Positivierung von Negativität (am Beispiel Molière und Marivaux)", Positionen der Negativität, ed. Harald Weinrich, Fink, 1975 (=Poetik und Hermeneutik 6), p. 341-366.
17 For example, as they are presented in the wen-commented anthology Theater und Aufklärung, see note 12.
18 For the following remarks see Peter Szondi, Die Theorie des bürgerlichen Trauerspiels im 18. Jh. Der Kaufmann, der Hausvater und der Hofmeister, Frankfurt, 1973; with regard especially to Mercier and the theatre of the early years of the Revolution see H.U. Gumbrecht, "Über das Versiegen ‘süsser Tränen' in der Französischen Revolution. Ein Aspekt aus der Funktionsgeschichte des ‘genre sérieux'", Lendemains 4, 1978, p. 67-86.
19 For a nuanced literary-historical revision of this cliché, see Dietmar Rieger, "Figaros Wandlungen. Versuch einer ideologiekritischen Analyse von Beaumarchais' Figaro-Almaviva-Trilogie", Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte, 1977, p. 77-105.
20 "Theaterdebatten…", see note 12, p. 21.
21 Jacques Proust, Introduction, Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturegeschichte 3, 1979, p. 248.
22 The expression "sens vécu/sens voulu" is taken from Mona Ozouf, "La fête sous la Révolution française", Faire de l'histoire, under the direction of Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora, vol. 3, Gallimard, 1974, p. 266.
23 Quoted from the Journal des Spectacles, 11 September 1793.
24 Neufchâtel, "Aux femmes", dedicatory poem for Paméla (newly performed, for the first time after Thermidor, on 24 July 1795).