The Attraction of the Contrary: Essays on the Literature of the French Enlightenment

by Walter E. Rex

• ISBN13: 9780521159005
• ISBN10: 0521159008
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-10-27
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The essays in this volume are concerned with ideas of contrarity and other kinds of polar opposition in French literature of the eighteenth century. Originally these ideas were merely part of an impulse to undermine the establishment, but as the century progressed the desire to invert social values and question accepted norms merged with the main groundswell of the age to form part of the movement of Revolution. Professor Rex considers some of the major writers of the period: Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Beaumarchais. He also explores minor genres such as opèras comiques, theatrical parodies, and erotic or pornographic pieces; these have been largely forgotten, but in their time they imbued the creative life of the era with vitality. In treating the literature in relation to the other arts, especially painting and music, these essays will be of interest to scholars of all aspects of eighteenth-century French culture.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Manon's hidden motives

Three literary approaches to the art of love

Inversions and subversions in the th̩̗tre de la foire, or, the end of Piron's Arlequin-Deucalion

Crispin's inventions

On Voltaire's Mérope

The figure of music in the frontispiece of Diderot's Encyclopédie

Secrets from Suzanne: the tangled motives of La Religieuse

A unique and forgotten opera libretto

The demise of classical tragedy in France

The Marriage of Figaro

Deucalion's last eighteenth-century appearance

Notes

Index

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