French literature of the 18th century
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For art and architecture in the 18th century, see French Rococo and Neoclassicism
The eighteenth century, particularly that portion of it between the death of Louis XIV in 1715 and the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, stands in startling contrast to the Great Age. It is the period of prose and reason, the period also of general ideas, many of which were to prove destructive to existing institutions of church and state. Its spirit was critical, sceptical, and innovating. Ideas of liberty, toleration, humanitarianism, equality, and progress were advocated increasingly.
Some of these ideas came from England, whose intellectual influence on France was of decisive importance during these years. The most characteristic literature of the century was of the nature of propaganda and was designed to make war on authority, dogma, and tradition. The leading writers of this "philosophic party," as it was called, were Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) satirized many of the institutions and social customs of his country and praised the English constitution.
Voltaire (1694-1778) attacked bigotry and superstition, and championed the victims of religious persecution and of political injustice. More than any other man he embodies the spirit of the age of reason. But most of his voluminous writings were too much concerned with questions of his own day to endure permanently. Only his letters and a few of his tales are now much read.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was the director-in-chief of the famous Encyclopédie, which was designed both as a storehouse of information and as an arsenal of weapons to attack ignorance, superstition, and intolerance. In purely literary matters the taste of the age was still classical. Voltaire's poetic tragedies, for instance, were modelled largely on those of Corneille and Racine. Diderot was more of an innovator. His plays, in particular, testify to the ever-increasing importance and power of the middle class.
Pierre de Marivaux (1688-1763), in the earlier part of the century, and Pierre Beaumarchais (1732-1799), in the latter half, carried on the tradition of good comedy writing. Other works of pure literature unconnected with propaganda are such novels as Alain-René Le Sage's Gil Blas (1715) and l'Abbé Prévost's Manon Lescaut (1731). Toward the close of the century the poet Marie-Joseph de Chénier (1762-1794) sounded the first note of authentic lyricism that had been heard in France for many decades.
But the most significant writer of France during the eighteenth century was not Voltaire but the Swiss-born Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). He taught the essential goodness of human nature, the rightness of our instincts, and the corruption of civilised institutions. He was the man of feeling in an age when intellect was worshipped. He was a reformer of education, an inspirer of revolutionary ideas in government and economics, and in literature a forerunner of romanticism. He has probably had more influence on ideas than any other man of the eighteenth century.
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