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Ebook available to libraries as part of Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment ONLINE
The emergence of a theatrical science of man in France, 1660-1740 highlights a radical departure from discussions of dramatic literature and its undergirding rules to a new, relational discourse on the emotional power of theater. Through a diverse cast of religious theaterphobes, government officials, playwrights, art theorists and proto-philosophes, Connors shows the concerted effort in early Enlightenment France to use texts about theater to establish broader theories on emotion, on the enduring psychological and social ramifications of affective moments, and more generally, on human interaction, motivation, and social behavior.
This fundamentally anthropological assessment of theater emerged in the works of anti-theatrical religious writers, who argued that emotional response was theater’s raison d’être and that it was an efficient venue to learn more about the depravity of human nature. A new generation of pro-theatrical writers shared the anti-theatricalists’ intense focus on the emotions of theater, but unlike religious theaterphobes, they did not view emotion as a conduit of sin or as a dangerous, uncontrollable process; but rather, as cognitive-affective moments of feeling and learning.
Connors’ study explores this reassessment of the theatrical experience which empowered writers to use plays, critiques, and other cultural materials about the stage to establish a theatrical science of man—an early Enlightenment project with aims to study and ‘improve’ the emotional, social, and political ‘health’ of eighteenth-century France.
This book highlights a radical departure from discussions of dramatic literature and its undergirding rules to a new, relational discourse on the emotional power of theater. Grounded in contemporary and early-modern theories, this reassessment of the theatrical experience shows a broader change in conceptions of subjectivity, emotionality, and learning during the early French Enlightenment.
Logan J. Connors is Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami. His next research project investigates connections between theater and the military in France and its colonies from 1680 to 1815.
Acknowledgments |
Introduction: theater, emotions, science of man |
Diderot’s relational drama |
From religious theaterphobia to theatrical innovation |
Affect, intentionality, and the history of emotions |
Chapter 1: Theaterphobia and the transformational power of performance |
Anti-theatrical criticism: goals and strategies |
Corneille, Nicole, and the reality of emotions |
Learning dangerously from the passions: Pierre Nicole’s Traitéde la comédieDebating theatrical emotions in the wake of Nicole’s Traité |
Chapter 2: “Que sur la superficie de notre cœur”:Jean-Baptiste Dubos’s theatrical emotions |
Emotional debates: past and present |
A different path to aesthetic appreciation |
The political case for pleasure |
Dubos’s cognitive-affective sequences |
Chapter 3: Beyond affect: from Dubos’s “passions superficielles” to Houdar de La Motte’s “sentiments raisonnables” |
La Motte, the Querelle, and the Regency |
La Motte’s “sentiments raisonnables” |
The dramaturgical power of intérêt |
Chapter 4: From the page to the stage: La Motte’s theatrical inquiry into the emotions |
Context and emotion in LesMacchabées (1721) |
Intentionality and suspense in Romulus (1722) |
Inèsde Castro (1723) and the emotional politics of intérêt |
Chapter 5: Strategic passions: Marivaux’sModernesubjectivities |
Marivaux’s trajectory from Moderne to bel esprit to scientist of man |
Learning from the “organs”: Marivaux’s intuitive ethics |
Sentimental strategies: Marivaux’s theories of emotion in LeTriomphede l’amour (1732) |
Chapter 6: Learning throughmultiplicité: emotion and distance in thecomédie larmoyanteThe decline and rebirth of Nivelle de La Chaussée’s emotional poetics |
Meaning-making through the romanesqueThe pièce-cadre: emotion, multiplicité, and spectatorship in La FausseAntipathie (1733) |
Conclusion: avant-gardes, emotion, and Enlightenment |
Works cited |
Index |