ACLS Humanities E-Book: A field of honor: writers, court culture and public theater in French literary life from Racine to the Revolution

A field of honor: writers, court culture and public theater in French literary life from Racine to the Revolution

Gregory S. Brown

Year: 2007, c2001.

Publisher: Columbia University Press.

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table of contents

Title Page

List of Illustrations

List of Web Resources

Preface

Abbreviations & Note on the Text

Abbreviations

Note on the Text

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Gens de lettres, Literary Institutions, and Court Culture in the Age of the French Enlightenment

[Intro]

1: Gens de lettres, the Old Regime, and the Enlightenment

2: The Republic of Letters and Early Modern Institutions in Cultural Historiography

3: Court Culture and Elite Self-Image: Honneur and Honnêteté

4: Public Theater

5: Analytic Concepts for Enlightenment Literary Life

1: Public Theater and Dramatic Authorship in Old Regime France, 1600-1757

[Intro]

1.1: From Court Poet and Troupe Leader to Playwright: Corneille, Racine, and Molière

1.2: The Comédie Française and the Status of its Playwrights, 1680-1750

1.3: Playwriting as a Strategy of Self-Fashioning: Bourgeois to Tragedian to Philosophe

1.4: Limits to Playwriting as a Strategy of Self-Fashioning: Bourgeois to Comic Author

1.5: The Failed Playwright, or the Poète Crotté: Literary Figure and Social Experience

1.6: A Brief Prosopography of Eighteenth-Century Playwrights

1.7: Conclusion: Playwriting and the Enlightenment

2: Playwriting for the Comédie Française in the Eighteenth Century: Règlements and the Rules of the Game

[Intro]

2.1: The Regulations of the Comédie Française, 1680–1757

2.2: Playwrights encounter the troupe: The "reading"

2.3: The Transfer of the Manuscript: Purchase or Gift?

2.4: Order of Performance: The Theater Season and Authors' "Rank"

2.5: The Performance of being a Playwright

2.6: Fame or Fortune?: "Droits d'auteur"

section

3: "Politesse perdue": The Patriot Playwright between Court and Public

[Intro]

3.1: Playwrights and Printed Editions

3.2: Mercier, the Patriot Playwright

3.3: Beaumarchais: Aspiring Man of Letters

3.4: Renou: Representing Honor in Correspondence and in Print

3.5: Lonvay: A New Tribunal for Men of Letters

3.6: The Cultural Politics of Playwriting at the Accession of Louis XVI

3.7: Mercier and the "Tribunal of the Nation"

3.8: Palissot, the unlikely Patriot; or, The Perils of Satire

3.9: Lonvay: Law and Print in the Service of "Letters"

3.10: Du Coudray and Cailhava: Journalist and Dramaturgical Theorist

3.11: Rutlidge: Playwright and Anti-Man of Letters

3.12: Conclusion: Playwrights and their Publics

Intermission: Beaumarchais and the Société des auteurs dramatiques, 1777–1780

4: Droits d'auteur and Approbation as Cultural Capital: Literary Property, Censorship, and Legitimacy at the Comédie Française, 1760-1780

[Intro]

4.1: The "Fall" of a Play: Between Institutional Culture and Authorial Property

4.2: Droits d'auteur: Court Culture, Property, and Propriety

4.3: Beaumarchais, Man of Property

4.4: Old Regime droits vs. Enlightenment Property

4.5: State Power and Authorial Liberty: The Evolution of the Police Censor

4.6: Theater Censorship in Action: Belloy and Rosoy (1765), Collé and Sedaine (1774)

4.7: Insiders and Outsiders: Beaumarchais, Du Buisson, and Suard (1780)

4.8: Reconsidering Censorship in the Age of Enlightenment

5: Self-Fashioning, Civility, and the Celebrity of Gens de lettres at the End of the Enlightenment: Beaumarchais and Gouges, 1781-1789

[Intro]

5.1: "Le Mariage de Figaro," Act I: Six Censors in Search of an Author

5.2: "Le Mariage de Figaro," Act II: Commerce, Publicity, and Cultural Capital

5.3: "Le Mariage de Figaro," Act III: Celebrity, Shame, and Censorship

5.4: Beaumarchais, Modern Man?

5.5: Olympe de Gouges, Woman of Letters

5.6: Fashioning the Female Writer

5.7: Self-Fashioning, Abolitionism, and Patriotism: A Writer's Identity and Liberty

5.8: Gouges v. Beaumarchais: Paradoxical Symbols of Modernity

6: From Court to Nation: "Liberty of Theaters" and Patriot Playwrights, 1789-1791

[Intro]

6.1: The Crisis of 1789 for the Comédie Française

6.2: Old Writers, New Strategies: Cailhava Returns

6.3: Liberty and Censorship: Chénier vs. Suard

6.4: Liberty of Theaters before the Municipal Assembly

6.5: The New Patriots: The Cordeliers District and the Revolution in Literary Life

6.6: Gouges in the Revolution: Of Patriots, Selves, and Slaves

6.7: Gouges and the Cultural Narrative of the "True Patriot"

6.8: Honnêtes hommes among the Patriots: Honnêtes hommesDroits d'auteur and the Rights of Man

6.9: Bringing Down the Curtain on Old Regime Literary Life

Conclusion: Vestiges of Gens de lettres, Legacies of the Enlightenment

[Intro]

1: Gens de Lettres, the Enlightenment, and the Revolution: Distinct Trajectories

2: "Intellectuals" between "Engagement" and "Duplicity": Confronting the Double Bind

3: Narrative and Modern Subjectivity: The Power of Self-Fashioning

Notes

Preface

Introduction

1. Public Theater and Dramatic Authorship in Old Regime France, 1600-1757

2. Playwriting for the Comédie Française in the Eighteenth Century: Règlements and the Rules of the Game

3. "Politesse perdue": The Patriot Playwright between Court and Public

Intermission: Beaumarchais and the Société des auteurs dramatiques, 1777–1780

4. Droits d'auteur and Approbation as Cultural Capital: Literary Property, Censorship, and Legitimacy at the Comédie Française, 1760-1780

5. Self-Fashioning, Civility, and the Celebrity of Gens de lettres at the End of the Enlightenment: Beaumarchais and Gouges, 1781-1789

6. From Court to Nation: "Liberty of Theaters" and Patriot Playwrights, 1789-1791

Conclusion: Vestiges of Gens de lettres, Legacies of the Enlightenment

Glossary

I: Theater-specific terms

II: General period terms

III: Early Modern Literary Institutions

IV: Analytic Concepts

Bibliography

I: Primary Source Bibliography

A: Manuscript Sources:

B: Printed Primary Sources:

C: Additional Eighteenth-Century Periodicals:

II: Secondary Sources

III: Links

About the Author

Archival documents

[Intro]

Chapter I

"Anciens Règlements . . . Des Comédiens du Roi en 1697. Approuvés et Renouvelés . . . au premier avril 1726" [BCF IVa]

"Règlements de Nos Seigneurs les Premiers Gentilshommes de la Chambre . . . " (1719) [BCF IVa]

Chapter II

"Anciens Règlements . . . Des Comédiens du Roi en 1697. Approuvés et Renouvelés . . . au premier avril 1726" [BCF IVa]

"Règlements de Nos Seigneurs les Premiers Gentilshommes de la Chambre . . . " (1719) [BCF IVa]

"Acte de Société passé entre les Comédiens Français Ordinaires du Roi, en exécution de l'Arrêt du Conseil du 18 juin 1757, le 9 juin 1758." [BCF]

Chapter III

Letter from Mercier to Thomas, July 10, 1770. [ARS MSS 15078 II 1 B, ff. 4-8]

Intermission

"Règlement pour la Comédie Française, annexé à l'Arrêt du Conseil de l'État du Roi, du 12 Mai 1780." [AN O1 844, # 5]: Chapitre 8: Pièces Nouvelles.

"Aux Auteurs Assemblés" [Archives familiales Beaumarchais (XI, VI, 23), 17 Août 1777]

Extrait des Registres du Conseil d'État du Roi, 9 décembre 1780. [BN-MSS, FF 9228. f24; AN O1 844, dossier 29]

Chapter IV

"Difficulté de fixer le taux de chute d'une pièce." [BAF: XIbis, XVI, ff. 5-12]

Chapter V

"Convention entre M. de Beaumarchais [et] M. [André] Beaussieur, 25 juin 1784." [AN-MC Étude XVI, 850]

Mémoires secrets pour servir à l'histoire de la république des lettres en France (Paris: 1786) 28: 225 (March 19, 1785).

"Que Caron de Beaumarchais," to the tune of "Que le sultan Saladin" [Reprinted in Auguste Paër, ed., Centenaire du Mariage de Figaro (Bruxelles: Gay, 1884) 123-124]

"Confession générale de M. de Beaumarchais" [Journal des Gens du Monde 4:76 (1785): 229-234]

Confession Générale d'un Homme exécuté au Caveau du Palais-Royal [NYPL-RBR: *KVR 5286]

Letter from Olympe de Gouges, November 27, 1788. [Cornell University, Kroch Library, French Revolution Collection; FR #4606]

Chapter VI

"Adresse aux Bons Patriotes." [Text of the printed cards distributed in the theater on October 19, 1789]

"Lettre de Madame de Gouges adressée à Messieurs les Colons américains," Chronique de Paris 118, p. 474 (December 19, 1789).

Comité du 19 juin 1790. [BCF Registre 124f, f. 59v]

Loi Relative aux Spectacles. Donné À Paris, le 19 janvier 1791.: "Décret de l'Assemblée Nationale, du 13 janvier 1791."

Marie-Joseph Chénier, "Discours en vers, contre la Calomnie." [BN-MSS: NAF 6852; Manuscrits de M. J. Chenier; f. 5, 1792]

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Title:

A field of honor : writers, court culture and public theater in French literary life from Racine to the Revolution by Gregory S. Brown.

Author:

Brown, Gregory S. (Gregory Stephen)

Extent:

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University of Michigan Library, Scholarly Publishing Office
Ann Arbor, Michigan
2008
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Source Version:

A field of honor : writers, court culture and public theater in French literary life from Racine to the Revolution by Gregory S. Brown.
Brown, Gregory S. (Gregory Stephen)
New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, c2001.

URL:

http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.99001

Subject Headings:

• Comédie-Française
• Dramatists, French -- 18th century
• French drama -- 18th century -- History and criticism
• Theater -- France -- History -- 18th century

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