French literature

The XVIIIth century

XVIIIth Century

1 October 2020

XXth century

1 October 2020

XIXth century

1 October 2020

XVIIIth century

1 October 2020

XVIIth Century

31 March 2021

Renaissance

1 October 2020

Middle Ages

The Eclipse of God

The century opens amid harsh winters and the death of Louis XIV, and ends with the great Revolution of 1789. Between these two landmarks, there are comparatively few dramatic events. From an internal perspective, the kingdom remains relatively calm: no major civil wars, no catastrophic epidemics.

And yet, a new world is quietly taking shape. The end of Louis XIV’s reign in 1715, which had been marked by a suffocating moral order, is followed by a kind of intellectual release. With God no longer placed at the absolute center of public life, people begin to push boundaries in every domain—for better or for worse. New foundations for social bonds and morality are being sought.

François Boucher, Brown Odalisque.
François Boucher, woman tying her garter.
Greuze, the white hat.

Fresh ideas in an old world

Philosophers dare to imagine a world without God; physicists explain, engineers build, and an encyclopedia of human knowledge is being compiled. Debates now revolve more around what one knows than what one believes. A spirit of moral relaxation fills the air.

In stark contrast with the 17th century, sensitivity flourishes: people speak of themselves, confide in one another, and often weep openly. Writers venture down new paths. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s works overflow with benevolent sentiment. On the darker side, literature is cut through by the cold blade of Choderlos de Laclos and the Marquis de Sade: evil and perversity stare unflinchingly back at the reader.

Then, in 1789—under the combined pressure of severe winters, unjust taxation, and new ideas—the Revolution erupts. The people behead their king and claim sovereignty for themselves. The nineteenth century has begun.

The french language in the 18th century

The French language changed significantly over the course of the 18th century. First, scientific progress had a major influence: words ending in -graphie, -logie, and -isme entered the vocabulary. Sentences became shorter and shed the excessive qui, duquel, and dequoi that were still present in the prose of seventeenth-century authors such as Descartes. With Rousseau, language became more sentimental; with Voltaire and Diderot, it became witty and sparkling. Little by little, it began to resemble the French we know today.

Breaking with the seventeenth century, which—as we have seen—sought to create a pure language free of popular expressions, the writers of the Enlightenment tended instead to believe that when two words appear close in meaning, one is not “good” and the other “bad”: each carries its own nuance, and the challenge lies in choosing with precision and finesse.

Above all, French was asserting itself as a language of culture, much as Latin and Greek had been in Antiquity. In earlier centuries, writers may have expressed themselves in French, but they often regarded “true culture” as residing in the ancient languages. By the Enlightenment, this mentality had shifted: there was a newfound intellectual confidence. Writers were no longer merely scribbling marginal notes on history; they were consciously contributing to it. Their works belonged to a new era. Scientific advances and artistic achievements were increasingly associated with the French language.

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18th-Century Literature:

Pleasure and Struggle

Between the icy atmosphere at the end of Louis XIV’s reign (he died in 1715) and the revolutionary upheaval of 1789, French literary life opened new paths, hit dead ends, explored a multitude of tones and styles, set fire to the Church, stirred hearts, and invented public opinion. How can such transformations be summed up?

Two major impulses dominated the era: a desire for pleasure—playing with words, ideas, wit, and even emotions—but also a desire to fight. For many writers, this was a century of struggle in the service of an ideal they were still in the process of defining, and above all against a social order or abuses they found intolerable.

A Lively Century

Excerpt from Les Indes Galantes by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1735). A quintessential 18th-century opera-ballet

« FIGARO.

…Because you are a great lord, you imagine yourself a great genius! Nobility, fortune, rank, office—how proud they make a man! And what have you done to deserve so many advantages? You took the trouble to be born, and nothing more; for the rest, you are a fairly ordinary fellow. Whereas I—good God!—lost in the obscure crowd, I have had to deploy more knowledge, calculation, and skill merely to survive than has been spent governing all the Spains these last hundred years. And you would cross swords with me! »

Beaumarchais, The Marriage Figaro

Time to play!

After the triumph of 17th-century classical tragedy (Corneille and Racine), Voltaire attempted to revive the genre. But tragedy without the sacred is like wine without alcohol—flat and irritating. His progressive outlook was ill-suited to tragedy, which presupposes an irresolvable internal conflict and a transgression that cannot be overcome. His contemporaries’ attempts were no more successful: when a form fails to renew itself, it fades away. As a result, the tragedies of the 18th century are now largely forgotten.

On the other hand, the theatre of the period truly flourished in its lighter, more playful works—most notably in Marivaux (The Game of Love and Chance) and Beaumarchais (The Marriage of Figaro). Love is joy, delight, a game. We are far from Phèdre! Yet even within this atmosphere of entertainment, the theatre raises new and unsettling issues: the place of women in society (La Nouvelle Colonie) or the question of merit in the social order (see box opposite).

Halfway between theatre and philosophical essay, Diderot’s dialogues (Jacques the Fatalist, D’Alembert’s Dream) also crackle with arguments and ideas, unfolding with the lively rhythm of conversations that sparkle like fireworks.

Stirring the Emotions

The novel made a decisive breakthrough in the 18th century with works such as Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul and Virginie and Abbé Prévost’s Manon Lescaut. Sensitivity, tenderness, and heartfelt emotion flow abundantly in the epistolary confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse, the century’s best-selling book.

In Denis Diderot’s domestic dramas—Le Fils naturel and Le Père de famille—scenes unfold in tearful embraces, overflowing with goodness and virtue.

Tenderness

Scarlatti, excerpt from sonate K466. Piano : W. Horowitz.

The Rise of Print

Books flourished throughout the 18th century. Their production continued to rise, so much so that on the eve of the Revolution, around 2,000 titles were published annually in France. Theology declined, devotional books remained numerous, and literature devoted to science and travel increased. There was also a considerable appetite for books reporting court gossip.

Periodicals expanded as well: by 1750, there were about 80 newspapers in France and 170 across Europe, many of them written in French.

Fight
Antonio Vivaldi, excerpt from Juditha Triumphans, RV644.
Emőke Baráth, soprano.

Turning the Pen into a Sword

Under the Regency, insolence and criticism resurfaced with Montesquieu’s Persian Letters. “The King of France is old,” declares the traveller from Isfahan. Others went further. In the unpublished papers of the priest Meslier, we discover a violent atheist and proto-communist calling to strangle nobles “with the guts of priests.”

As legal and clandestine publishing expanded, the so-called philosophes began to challenge the social order and, above all, the Church’s authority. The state quickly lost control over the circulation of Voltaire’s Tales, his Philosophical Dictionary, and Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. These polemics were primarily directed at institutions of power—but they did not exclude bitter feuds among writers themselves. Indeed, Voltaire and Rousseau, now symbolically united in the crypt of the Panthéon, were irreconcilable ideological adversaries.

A new moral order?

In a world where God and tradition were losing their hold, what would become of moral law? This question runs throughout the century, particularly in Diderot’s work, which raises unsettling issues in Rameau’s Nephew and This Is Not a Story.

SAINT-ALBIN.
Fathers? Fathers? There are none… There are only tyrants.

THE FAMILY FATHER.
Oh, heavens!

— Diderot, Le Père de famille, Act II, Scene 6

Beneath a surface of wit and lightness, Voltaire’s Candide presents a vision of history that is chaotic and tragic, in which salvation lies in finding a corner sheltered from human madness. But why not draw the opposite conclusion? If God does not exist, why not indulge in our vices without restraint? That, in effect, is the path taken by the perfectly perverse couple invented by Choderlos de Laclos in Les Liaisons dangereuses, an epistolary narrative that is both chilling and emotionally precise, offered without authorial judgment.

“When have you ever seen me deviate from the rules I laid down for myself, or fail to live up to my principles? And I say my principles deliberately; for they are not, like those of other women, adopted by chance, accepted without reflection, and followed out of habit. They are the product of my deepest thought. I created them myself, and I may truly say that I am my own work.”

 

Choderlos de Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons, Letter 81 (Madame de Merteuil to Valmont)

Antonio Vivaldi, excerpt from the andante of the bassoon concerto RV484.

European Networks

Writers travelled widely in the 18th century. Driven out of Paris by royal agents, Voltaire found delight in England’s customs and was astonished by Shakespeare. Persecuted on the continent, Jean-Jacques Rousseau also sought refuge across the Channel, though he eventually fell out with his host, David Hume. English philosophers such as Locke and Hume had a profound influence on French intellectuals, and their works enjoyed immense success throughout Europe.

Switzerland, with its autonomous cantons, also became a land of freedom. Voltaire settled near the border for more than twenty years, ready to flee quickly if threatened by French authorities.

Writers also travelled for pleasure or practical reasons—to Spain, like Beaumarchais (The Barber of Seville), or to Venice, like Rousseau. Venice was also the birthplace of Casanova, the adventurer who roamed across Europe before ending his life in what is now the Czech Republic.

Since many of Diderot’s subversive writings could not be published in France, they were privately distributed to a small circle of European monarchs—Catherine II of Russia, the Queen of Sweden, the King of Poland, and others. Late in life, Diderot visited the Russian Empress (as Voltaire had visited Frederick II of Prussia) to share his ideas and contribute to a project to translate the Encyclopédie into Russian.

Major writers of the XVIIIth century

Montesquieu

Voltaire

J.-J. Rousseau

duc de Saint-Simon

Denis Diderot

Choderlos de Laclos