Spectres of Multiplicity. 18th-Century Literature Revisited from the Outside in

Yves Citton (1)

1 LIRE - Littérature, idéologies, représentations, XVIIIe-XIXe siècles

From the age of Louis XIV to the Jacobin Revolution, the French eighteenth century is often portrayed as dreaming an enduring dream of unity. A great deal of administrative and intellectual energy was spent in attempting to unify the territory under one king, the people under one law, the beliefs under one God, the artists under one academy, the warring European nations under one scheme of perpetual peace, the branches of knowledge under one encyclopaedic tree, the erring variety of customs and superstitions under one ideal of universal rationality, and the annoying diversity of idioms (regional or national) under one standardized and unifying language - the Parisian French spoken at the Court, regulated by the official Academy, and blessed by the one King (anointed by true God). What was a mere fantasy in 1700 appeared to have become a historical reality by the end of the century: in a global survey which anticipates (in a euphoric mode) our current anxieties about cultural homogenization among world cultures, Louis-Antoine Caraccioli explained in L'Europe française ou Paris modèle des nations (French Europe or Paris as a model of nations, 1776) that everyone in Europe ate, drank, dressed, spoke, read, socialized, and thought in the same (French) fashion. Nicolas Baudeau, one of the early Economists who, also in the 1770s, claimed the universal and "natural" validity of free-market mechanisms, demonstrated to a young aristocratic lady that, looking no further than her lunch table, she could find the obvious proof of an already-globalized world-market, which satisfied her daily needs (and whims) by bringing her wheat from Poland, porcelain from China, spoons made from Peruvian iron, and sugar cultivated in Haiti by slaves dragged out of Africa. By the time Napoleon conquered most of continental Europe and divided it into quasi-French departments, the "Grand Design" of political unification dreamt by Henry IV and his minister Sully (revived by the Abbé de Saint-Pierre around 1713, and revisited by Rousseau in the 1750s) briefly appeared on the verge of a lasting triumph.

Domaines: Littératures

Yves Citton. Spectres of Multiplicity. 18th-Century Literature Revisited from the Outside in. French Global: A New Approach to French Literary History, Columbia University Press, pp.372-387, 2010. ⟨hal-00848184⟩