著者

玉田 敦子

出版者

中部大学

雑誌

貿易風 : 中部大学国際関係学部論集 (ISSN:18809065)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.2, pp.35-58, 2007-04-01

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In eighteenth-century France, the concept of "the sublime" became the vogue. Great names such as Diderot and Rousseau often used "sublime" in their work, and other famous authors in the Age of Enlightenment, like La Motte, Batteux, and Marmontel, attempted to define the word. Treatises on rhetoric written in French at this time defined the sublime to be perfection in style that one must learn to attain. In the Age of Enlightenment, the Academie Francaise set up a linguistic policy in order to "purify" the French language, consulting the language of works published by French classical authors. The Academie's policy owed much to education in rhetoric in "college", and thus consecrated these works in the name of sublime. This paper deals with the intertextuality brought by two principal sources of treatises on the sublime in the eighteenth century in France: the introduction that Boileau added to Longinus' Peri Hupsous in 1674, and the article "Sublime" written by the Chevalier de Jaucourt in 1765. For that, it is necessary to clarify the process through which the concept of the sublime became secularized, by analyzing the treatises on rhetoric published in the Age of Enlightenment. In these treatises on rhetoric, always consulting Longinus' On the Sublime translated by Boileau, the notion of the sublime became separated from its previous theological connotation. If the concept of the sublime had a great impact on the French literary society of that time, Boileau defined the sublime in a short sentence. First of all, he distinguished the sublime from the "style sublime" that required the grandeur of hyperbolic expressions. Then, following the description of Longinus, Boileau defined the sublime as a simple expression that makes extraordinary and marvelous things. Not only this definition but also the passage in Genesis, "And said God let there be light, and there was light, " appear in the treatise on rhetoric as models of the sublime. The article "sublime" written in Encyclopedie became another authority on this concept. Jaucourt followed Boileau's succinct description closely, and then developed it into a full five pages by quoting ancient and classical French authors. Following the example of a contemporary author, Silvan, in his Traite du sublime, Jaucourt divided the notion into two categories: "sublime by images" and "sublime by sentiments." His article gave no more explanation than did Boileau's introduction, but explained in great detail the concept of "sublime by sentiment" that is represented through the acts of human beings. That provides a further aspect of the secularisation of the notion. While French classical literary theory pursued a simple style in the name of the "clearness of style, " in the next century, there emerged a preference for "style simple" but "concentrated." In the seventeenth century, communication had to be transparent, and this was achieved by means of using ample words in order to express rich and complex contents. However, in the following century, the rules changed drastically under the influence of the development of sensualism: it was only a "concentrated" style that could possibly create the energy required to express rich contents within short expressions. In this way, stylistic simplicity necessarily became closed to the sublime effect that transports an audience by means of concentrated expressions.