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The Sublime and French Seventeenth-Century Theories of the Spectacle: Toward an Aesthetic Approach to Performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2017

Bram van Oostveldt  and
Stijn Bussels
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Extract

Theatre scholars and historians assume too easily that theoretical reflection on the performative qualities of the theatre began only in the eighteenth century. In mid-eighteenth century France, writers and philosophers such as Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond D'Alembert, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Antoine-François Riccoboni, or Jean-Georges Noverre (to name but a few) showed a passionate interest in the aesthetics and the morality of performance practices in dramatic theatre, music theatre, or dance. Compared to this rich diversity of ideas in the eighteenth century, seventeenth-century French writings on theatre and the performing arts seem, at first sight, far less interesting or daring. However, this is merely a modern perception. Our idea of le théâtre classique is still rather reductionist, and often limited to the theatrical canon of Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, and Molière. It affords a view of the performing arts that is dominated by tragedy and comedy and that, firmly embedded within a neo-Aristotelian poetics, privileges dramatic concerns above performative interests.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 209 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2017 

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Footnotes

This article is part of the results from the larger European Research Council (ERC) research project Elevated Minds: The Sublime and the Public Arts in Seventeenth-Century Paris and Amsterdam. This ERC project is located at Leiden University and runs from 2013 to 2018. Project ID: 312306.

References

Endnotes

1. See Baby, Hélène, “D'Aubignac et Corneille ou de la vraisemblance,” in d'Aubignac, Abbé, La Pratique du théâtre, ed. Baby, Hélène (Paris: Champion, 2001), 608–75Google Scholar.

2. Spielmann, Guy, “Pour une théorie d'ensemble des spectacles de l’Âge Classique,” in L’Âge de la représentation: L'Art du spectacle au XVIIe siècle. Actes du IXe Colloque du Centre International de Rencontres sur le XVIIe siècle (Kiel, 16–18 March 2006), ed. Zaiser, Rainer (Tübingen: Gunther Narr, 2007), 179–91Google Scholar. Le Théâtre français du XVIIe siècle: Histoire, textes choisis, mises en scène, ed. Biet, Christian (Paris: Éditions L'avant-scène théâtre, 2009)Google Scholar.

3. See Schechner, Richard, Performance Studies: An Introduction (New York and London: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar.

4. Guy Debord's notion of the Society of Spectacle contributed largely to this. Debord, Guy, La Société du spectacle (Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1967)Google Scholar. See also Agamben, Giorgio, “Marginal Notes on Commentaries on the Society of the Spectacle, ” in Means without End: Notes on Politics, trans. Binetti, Vincenzo and Casarino, Cesare (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 73–89 Google Scholar.

5. For the French dictionaries see below, notes 6–12. For the English dictionaries we can refer to Robert Cawdrey and Samuel Johnson. In Cawdrey a spectacle is simply described as “a thing to be looked at.” Cawdrey, Robert, A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Usual English Words (London: I. R. for Edmund Weauer, 1604)Google Scholar, www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/ret/cawdrey/cawdrey0.html, accessed 22 January 2017. In Johnson we can read that spectacle refers to “a show; a gazing stock; anything exhibited to the view as eminently remarkable.” Johnson, Samuel, Dictionary of the English Language (Dublin: Jones), 1759 Google Scholar.

6. Furetière, Antoine, Dictionnaire universel contenant généralement tous les mots françois, … (The Hague and Rotterdam: Arnout & Reinier Leers, 1690)Google Scholar, n.p. (translation ours).

7. Ibid.

8. Richelet, Césare-Pierre, Dictionnaire françois, contenant les mots et les choses, plusieurs nouvelles remarques sur la langue française, … (Geneva: Jean Herman Widerhold, 1680)Google Scholar, n.p.

9. Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise dédié au Roy, 2 vols. (Paris: la veuve Jean Baptiste Coignard–Jean Baptiste Coignard, 1694)Google Scholar, n.p. (translation ours).

10. Furetière, n.p.

11. See, e.g., the Jesuit Dictionnaire de Trévoux, which had several editions between 1704 and 1771.

12. de Jaucourt, Louis, “Spectacles,” in Encyclopédie, dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers par une société des gens de lettres (Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton, & Durand, 1751–65)Google Scholar, 17 vols. (+ 11 vols. pls.), 15 (1765): 446. Digitized by ARTFL project; http://artflsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.14:1475.encyclopedie0416.4592850, accessed 19 February 2017.

13. McGowan, Margaret, “Racine, Menestrier, and Sublime Effects,” Theatre Research International 1.1 (1975): 1–13 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. For a long time it was believed the text was from the third-century rhetor Longinus. Philological research has since shown that the text must date from the first century ad. Officially, therefore, he is called Ps. Longinus; but the literature agrees upon using the name Longinus.

15. Delehanty, Ann T., “From Judgment to Sentiment: Changing Theories of the Sublime, 1674–1710,” Modern Language Quarterly 66.2 (2005): 151–72Google Scholar.

16. Boileau, Nicolas, trans., “Longinus’ Treatise of the Sublime. With Critical Reflections on Some Passages out of Longinus …,” in The Works of Mons. Boileau Despreaux, trans. Ozell, John et al. (London: E. Sanger and E. Curll, 1711–13)Google Scholar, 3 vols., 2 (1712): 7.

17. Emma Gilby, Sublime Worlds: Early Modern French Literature (London: Legenda, 2006), 1–4.

18. Weinberg, Bernard, “Translations and Commentaries of Longinus, ‘On the Sublime’ to 1600: A Bibliography,” Modern Philology 47.3 (1950): 145–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Brody, Jules, Boileau and Longinus (Geneva: Droz, 1958)Google Scholar. Fumaroli, Marc, “Rhétorique d’école et rhétorique adulte: Remarques sur la réception européenne du traité ‘Du Sublime’ au XVIe et au XVIIe siècle,” Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France 86.1 (1986): 33–51 Google Scholar. This essay was reprinted in Fumaroli, Marc, Héros et orateurs: Rhétorique et dramaturgie cornéliennes (Geneva: Droz, 1996), 377–98Google Scholar; references made herein are to this latter edition. Cronk, Nicholas, The Classical Sublime: French Neoclassicism and the Language of Literature (Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2002)Google Scholar. Hache, Sophie, La Langue du ciel: Le Sublime en France au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 2000)Google Scholar. Gilby, Sublime Worlds.

19. The fact, for instance, that it was Boileau, who published his translation of Longinus together in 1674 with the Art poétique—the ultimate canon of French classicism—simply did not seem right. How could Boileau, known as an “apostle of Reason,” possibly have understood this “champion of Passion”? Brody, 38.

20. Fumaroli, Héros, 389.

21. Martin, Éva Madeleine, “The ‘Prehistory’ of the Sublime in Early Modern France: An Interdisciplinary Perspective,” in The Sublime: From Antiquity to the Present, ed. Costelloe, Timothy M. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 77–101 Google Scholar, at 101.

22. Translations of the Sublime: The Early Modern Reception and Dissemination of Longinus’ “Peri Hupsous” in Rhetoric, the Visual Arts, Architecture and the Theatre, ed. van Eck, Caroline et al. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012)Google Scholar. This interdisciplinary and transnational perspective is also the core business in our ERC comparative research project Elevated Minds. In this project we focus on how seventeenth-century architecture, theatre, and cultural performances in Paris and Amsterdam produced an overwhelming and stupefying effect on the beholder that served different and often hostile political, social, cultural, and religious contexts. See www.hum.leiden.edu/lucas/elevatedminds.

23. Fumaroli, Héros, 384–5. Forestier, Georges, Essai de génétique théâtrale: Corneille à l'oeuvre (Geneva: Droz, 2004), 292–7Google Scholar. Gilby, Sublime Worlds, 58–68.

24. The broad understanding of spectacle has recently infused an increasing interest in the multimedial and technical aspects of seventeenth-century spectacles. Christian Delmas, Hélène Visentin, and Jan Clarke, for instance, focused on the poetical function of theatrical machinery in the tragédie en machines. However, we still lack insight into how the multimedial aspects of classicist performances produce powerful emotions and affects in the spectator. See Le Théâtre au 17e siècle: Pratiques du mineur, ed. Baby, Hélène, with Delmas, Christian (Paris: Champion, 2004)Google Scholar. Hélène Visentin, “Le Théâtre à machines en France à l’âge classique: Histoire et poétique d'un genre” (Ph.D. thesis, Université de Sorbonne–Paris IV, 1999), 2 vols. Clarke, Jan, The Guénégaud Theatre in Paris (1673–1680), vol. 3: The Demise of the Machine Play (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2007)Google Scholar. Clarke, Jan, “A Symbiosis of Special Effects: From the Machine Play to the tragédie lyrique and Back Again,” in Formes et formations au dix-septième siècle: Actes du 37e congrès annuel de la North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, ed. Norman, Buford (Tübingen: Gunther Narr, 2006), 121–32Google Scholar.

25. Fumaroli, Héros, 382–4, 388.

26. On emotional involvement of the author to create a vivid description, Longinus refers to Euripides’ description of Phaethon's fatal ride: “Would you not say that the writer's soul is aboard the car, and takes wing to share the horses’ peril? Never could it have visualized such things, had it not run beside those heavenly bodies.” Longinus, On the Sublime, trans. Fyfe, W. H. and Russell, Donald (Loeb Classical Library 199, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2005), 143–307 Google Scholar, XV, §4 (219).

27. On this contagious effect of vivid description on the audience see Longinus, XV, §§2–3.

28. See van Eck, Caroline, Classical Rhetoric and the Visual Arts in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 7–8 Google Scholar, 151–62. See also van Eck, Caroline, Art, Agency and Living Presence: From the Animated Image to the Excessive Object (Berlin: De Gruyter and Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2015), 32–6Google Scholar.

29. The perfect example of this speedy and “rugged sublimity” finds Longinus in the orator Demosthenes: “Our countryman with his violence, yes, and his speed, his force, his terrific power of rhetoric, burns, as it were, and scatters everything before him, and may therefore be compared to a flash of lightning or a thunderbolt.” Longinus, XII, §4 (209).

30. Aristotle, , The Art of Rhetoric, trans. Freese, J. H. (Loeb Classical Library 193, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1926)Google Scholar, 1386a29–b1 (229). See also Bussels, Stijn, The Animated Image: Roman Theory on Naturalism, Vividness and Divine Power (Leiden: Leiden University Press and Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012), 61–6Google Scholar and 112–16.

31. de Pure, Michel, Idées des spectacles anciens et nouveaux (Paris: Michel Brunet, 1668), 168–9Google Scholar, quote at 169. Subsequent citations in this discussion appear parenthetically in the text. All translations are our own.

32. See also Marin, Louis, Le Portrait du roi (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1981), 240–1Google Scholar.

33. Martin, 90–4. See also Pseudo-Longin: De la sublimité dans le discours, ed. Gilby, Emma (Chambéry: L'Act Mem, 2007)Google Scholar.

34. On this uniting strategy of spectacles, see, e.g., Burke, Peter, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

35. Scholar, Richard, Le-je-ne-sais-quoi: Enquête sur une énigme, trans. Constantinesco, T. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2010), 19–48 Google Scholar.

36. Bouhours, Dominique, Entretiens d'Ariste et d'Eugene (Amsterdam: Jacques le Jeune, 1671), 264–5Google Scholar (all translations are our own).

37. Ibid., 267, 274.

38. Ibid., 4–5, 179, 272–3. As the overwhelming effect of nature or the uncanny experience of works of art, le-je-ne-sais-quoi seems thus to be a first step in what later will become the Burkean understanding of the sublime. See Cronk, 61.

39. Bouhours, 180–1.

40. Ibid., 272.

41. The Latin inscriptions and epigrams were invented by André Félibien, the gouaches were made by Jacques Bailly under supervision of Le Brun, and the madrigals beneath were invented by Charles Perrault. This cooperation shows us again how the Petite Académie—like any other cultural institution under Colbert and Louis—worked as a carefully directed collective body in expressing and mediating the image of the king. See Grivel, Marianne, “Genèse d'un manuscrit,” in Devises pour les tapisseries du roi, ed. Grivel, Marianne and Fumaroli, Marc (Paris: BNF-Herscher, 1988), 107–19Google Scholar.

42. As Jacques Vanuxem convincingly argued, the figure most probably depicts the fourth scene in Cavalli's opera Ercole amante, which premiered in the Salle des Machines in the Tuileries Palace in February 1662 for the occasion of the wedding of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of Spain. The machinery for this performance, designed by Carlo Vigarani, was among the most spectacular ever to be seen on a European stage. Jacques Vanuxem, “Les Fêtes théâtrales de Louis XIV et le baroque de la Finta Pazza à Psyché (1645–1671),” Baroque (online), 2/1967, posted 18 June 2012, accessed 14 December 2015 at http://baroque.revues.org/253.

43. Grivel and Fumaroli, 105 (translation ours).

44. Ibid.

45. See Clément, Pierre, Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Colbert (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1861–82)Google Scholar, 8 vols., 5 (1868): 551 (translation ours). We would like to thank Dr. Jan Lazardzig who pointed us at the plans for erecting this academy. See also Lazardzig, Jan, “Die Maschine als Spektakel: Funktion und Admiration im Maschinendenken des 17.Jahrhunderts,” Instrumente in Kunst und Wissenschaft: Zur Architectonik kultureller Grenzen im 17. Jahrhundert, ed. Schramm, Helmar, Schwarte, Ludger, and Lazardzig, Jan (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006), 167–93Google Scholar.

46. Jean-Baptiste Lully saw Guichard's initiative as a rival for his own Académie royale de musique and successfully objected to it in 1676—and definitively in 1678, when Louis withdrew his previous decision. Clément, 5: 551, n. 2.

47. McGowan, Margaret, “Ménestrier, maître des spectacles au théâtre de forme irrégulière,” in Claude-François Ménestrier: Les Jésuites et le monde des images, ed. Sabatier, Gerard (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2009), 131–43Google Scholar, at 132–3.

48. Ralph Dekoninck, “La Philosophie des images: D'une ontologie à une pragmatique de l'image,” in Ménestrier, ed. Sabatier, 103–13. See also Saunders, Alison, The Seventeenth-Century French Emblem: A Study in Diversity (Geneva: Droz, 2000), 329–48Google Scholar. Adams, Alison, Rawles, Stephen, and Saunders, Alison, A Bibliography of Claude-François Menestrier: Printed Editions 1655–1765 (Geneva: Droz, 2012), xix–xxiii Google Scholar.

49. Dekoninck, 110.

50. Fumaroli, Héros, 346. Gilby, Sublime Worlds, 2–3.

51. Loach, Judy, “L'Influence de Tesauro sur le Père Menestrier,” in La France et l'Italie au temps de Mazarin, ed. Serroy, Jean (Grenoble: Press Universitaires de Grenoble, 1986), 167–71Google Scholar. Adams et al., xi–xii.

52. There are three versions of the manuscript: two in the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon (MS 1514 and MS 2074) and one in the BNF–L'Arsenal in Paris (MS fr. 15502). The version mentioned here is the Paris version. Claude-François Ménestrier, MS fr. 15502, 112v.

53. Next to Longinus, Ménestrier also refers to Aristotle, Hermogenes, Aphthonius of Antioch, Demetrius of Phalerum, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Ibid.

54. Brody, 23–9. Cronk, 124–7.

55. Le Brun, Jacques, “Le Père Lalemant et les débuts de l'Académie Lamoignon,” Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France 61.2 (1961): 153–76Google Scholar.

56. Margaret McGowan, “Racine, Menestrier, and Sublime Effects,” 3.

57. Ménestrier, Claude-François, “Des effets de la musique des anciens Grecs,” Des représentations en musique anciennes et modernes (Paris: René Guignard, 1681), 86–98 Google Scholar, at 94.

58. Longinus, XXXIX, §§1–3 (286–7).

59. Longinus, XXXIX, §3 (287).

60. Gilby, Sublime Worlds, 24–5. See also Wieneke Jansen, “Harmony of Words: Music and Musical Metaphors in Dionysius and Longinus” (M.A. thesis in Classical Literature, Leiden University, 2012), 41–6.

61. Ménestrier, Des représentations en musique, 95.

62. Ibid., 96 (translation ours). Already in his Traité des tournois from 1669, Ménestrier discusses the effect of music in terms that are closely related to the sublime. Ménestrier, Claude-François, Traité des tournois, ioustes, carrousels et autres spectacles publics (Lyon: Jacques Muguet, 1669), 168Google Scholar.

63. Ménestrier is not the first who ignores this distinction between words and music. Already in his De erroribus magnorum virorum in dicendo (Rome: Mascardi, 1635)Google Scholar, the Italian scholar and librarian of the Vatican Leone Allacci stressed the sublime potential of music. This is repeated in his important Drammaturgia (Rome: Mascardi, 1666)Google Scholar, which shows clear interests in the sensuous effects of theatre and opera. Although Allacci is not mentioned in Des représentations, Ménestrier might have known the work through his Italian connections. On Allacci and the sublime in music see Refini, Eugenio, “Soni Fiunt Suaviores: Musical Implications in the Early Modern Reception of Longinus’ Peri Hupsous ,” Lias: Journal of Early Modern Intellectual Culture and Its Sources, special issue (43.2) (2016), ed. van Oostveldt, Bram and Bussels, Stijn, Jansen, Wieneke, 241–262 Google Scholar.

64. Ménestrier, Des représentations en musique, 74.

65. Ibid., 65.

66. “Qu'on peigne mille objets dans un même Tableau, / Que de l'ombre & du jour la sçavante imposture, / Fasse approcher de nous ou fuïr une figure, / Et rassemble en un point le Ciel, la Terre & l'Eau. / Le Brun porte plus loin le pouvoir du Pinceau, / Sçavans ne dites plus qu'imiter la nature, / Est le dernier effort de la docte peinture, / Plus d'honneur attendoit cet Appelle nouveau. / Il peint les Passions, il rend l'ame visible, / De la Divinité fait un être sensible, / Represente la grace, à la gloire il atteint, / Ce que l'oeil ne peut voir, son addresse l'exprime, / Comme Paul il s’éleve au Ciel le plus sublime, / Il voit ce qu'il y vit, il fait plus, il le peint.” Ménestrier, Des représentations en musique, 72–3 (all translations are our own).

67. Longinus, XVII, §2 (231).

68. Ibid. (233; italics added).

69. Ibid., XV, §11 (225). See also van Eck, Caroline, “Living Statues: Alfred Gell's Art and Agency, Living Presence Response and the Sublime,” Art History 33.4 (2010): 642–59Google Scholar.

70. Ménestrier, Des représentations en musique, preface, n.p.

71. Ibid., 265.

72. Longinus, XXXIII, §§2–5 (268).

73. McGowan, “Racine, Menestrier, and Sublime Effects,” 2–3. See also Quinault, Philippe, “Alceste,” suivi de “La Querelle d'Alceste”: Anciens et modernes avant 1680. Edition critique, ed. Brooks, William, Norman, Bufford, and Zarucchi, Jeanne Morgan (Geneva: Droz, 1994)Google Scholar.

74. Ménestrier, Des représentations en musique, 263–6.

75. Bouhours, 345.

76. Ménestrier, Traité des tournois, second (unfolied) page of the dedication.

77. de la Bruyère, Jean, “Les Caractères de Théophraste traduits du Grec” avec “Les Caractères; ou Les moeurs de ce siècle,” 4th ed. (Lyon: Thomas Amaulry, 1689), 97Google Scholar. See also Bram van Oostveldt and Stijn Bussels, “One Never Sees Monsters without Experiencing Emotion: Le Merveilleux and the Sublime in Theories on French Performing Arts (1650–1750),” in Translations of the Sublime, 139–61.

78. Gabriel Bonnot Mably, quoted in Downing Thomas, A., Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime 1647–1785 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 124Google Scholar. Cf. van Oostveldt and Bussels, “One Never Sees Monsters,” 158.

79. de Cahusac, Louis, Danse ancienne et moderne (La Haye: Jean Neaulme, 1754)Google Scholar, quoted in Wood, Caroline and Sadler, Graham, French Baroque Opera: A Reader (Aldershot, UK and Birmingham, VT: Ashgate, 2000), 113Google Scholar.