What works did Enlightenment readers appreciate? Do some of those they condemned for aesthetic or moral reasons deserve to be rediscovered? What does our literary taste owe to the classics? These are all questions addressed in this attractive but unfinished essay, recently translated into French.
Originally published in English in 2011 by an American academic specializing in French literature from XVIIIe century, this synthesis on the question of literary judgment considered through the prism of bad taste completes, thanks to its French translation, a set of recent works relating to the notion of taste in the classical age: Style defects and aesthetic flaws: XVIe–XVIIIe centuriesunder the direction of Carine Barbafieri and Jean-Yves Vialleton (Garnier, 2017), and above all The Invention of Bad Taste in the Classical Age (XVIIe–XVIIIe centuries) under the direction of the same Carine Barbafieri — the inspiration for this translation project — and Jean-Christophe Abramovici (Peeters, 2013).
This last collective work, while focusing on questions of literary aesthetics, also considered taste in the culinary domain where the notion originated. Solely devoted to the literary field, Jennifer Tsien’s book intends to show how the notion, as it is mobilized by certain thinkers and writers of the XVIIIe century, attempts to conjure up an idea of literature that they considered unacceptable. It therefore explains how a certain XVIIIe century, in which we find essentially the authors considered “major” (Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot) – in addition to a few theorists known only to specialists -, has managed to impose literary canons that have passed into posterity, and to make us forget entire sections of the literary production of the time. By tracing the broad outlines of the criticisms of bad taste addressed to some and others, Jennifer Tsien defines in implicit form what was considered good taste for the time, but also shows what was actually read during the Age of Enlightenment. Beyond the sole theorization of this notion of taste, the work therefore allows us to consider the production of the century in a broad manner by freeing ourselves from the a priori aesthetics which for some of them were constructed by contemporaries themselves.
Write everything, read everything?
Before considering in detail the criteria for recognizing, in order to better stigmatize, this bad taste, the author studies in two more general chapters the multiplication of works in the classical age and the debates that result from it regarding the quality of books, but also of those who write them (chap. 1 “Too many books”). In these debates, the definition of bad taste – and consequently the purely aesthetic question – will play a central role (chap. 2 “What is good taste?”). Jennifer Tsien partially avoids the pitfall of offering in a few pages an overview that is too incomplete and general to be relevant by choosing to highlight little-known texts, which allow us to approach some of the questions raised in an original way. The proliferation of books and the mercenary motivation that can drive certain authors, the question of the quality of texts and that of the legitimacy of the very act of writing, are thus considered through the prism of “bibliomania” and the essay by the Lyon academician Louis Bollioud-Mermet on the subject (1761). For the rest, the reader will find general reminders of the main aesthetic theories that clash in the current of XVIIIe century: the almost mathematical systems of Crousaz and André, the idealized norm of “beautiful nature” according to Batteux, and the theories more based on the sensitivity of Dubos, Montesquieu, Voltaire or Diderot. The whole is associated with numerous critical bibliographical references.
Self-centered classics?
The rest of the book explores in a more interesting way different criteria of bad taste as essentially theorized by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, and in particular Voltaire, on whom the author frequently relies. With the category of “barbarian” (chapter 3), Jennifer Tsien underlines the way in which good taste is constructed in reaction against a certain past, generally associated with a long Middle Ages, which is extended to the XVIe century and whose historical content remains in reality very vague. The author shows the condemnation of which foreign literature is the object: J. Tsien focuses on the question of oriental style, but it would have been possible to conduct the same questioning starting from English theater, for example, and in particular from Shakespearean tragedy, from which Voltaire sought to draw inspiration before condemning it for its barbarity and its opposition to classical French good taste. It is regrettable, however, that, on this question of oriental taste, the author did not take sufficient account of the polemical issue underlying many remarks or parodic repetitions, the use of oriental style being in fact first and foremost a mask to attack the biblical style. Before speaking of the “fantastic content” (fanciful, rather?) of some of the Persian Letters (p. 169) that would offend common sense: it should be remembered that they have the Bible in their sights. Beyond considerations of taste, it is religious controversy that guides the writing, and to mention it only as a last resort makes the enterprise lose its meaning.
Of order and meaning
THE XVIIIe century enjoys enigmas and other logogriphs, which the readers of the newspapers of the time were fond of. The theme of the incomprehensible in fact puts the author on the path of the “enigmatic style”, which takes him quite far from the enigmas and other worldly entertainments provided in periodicals. Starting from questions of style and rhetoric (relating for example to the place and relevance of images in discourse), the author comes to examine fundamental problems linked in particular to the status (and reality) of a divine word and to philosophical questions of the possibilities of human intellection, but also of the nature of language and writing, at a time when the deciphering of figurative writings such as hieroglyphics still constitutes an “enigma”.
While the obscurity of the enigmas opposes the clarity of the style, the notion of disorder goes against the other great classical imperative. The author sketches out some leads on this subject: theoretical remarks on the general principles of construction of fictional texts – from Montesquieu to Diderot (pp. 232-234) – or of newspapers (pp. 249-252) coexist and intermingle, others on the differences in creativity between the sexes (pp. 236-237, pp. 244-245), but also general considerations on the mutation of aesthetic criteria due to the increasing professionalization of writers over the century (pp. 241-242), which would oppose the worldly practice that had reigned until then.
If the work therefore mobilizes a certain number of elements of reflection on the question of taste in France XVIIIe century, we will regret the limits reached by the often too rapid contextualization of the texts, or even by a lack of knowledge of the corpora which are often cited in a manner that is not very rigorous, or even naive. The author thus notes that the numbering of the edition of the Persian Letters that she cites differs “from the other editions” (p. 167): it is not knowing (or noticing without understanding the reasons) that the posthumous edition of 1758, taken up by the vast majority of pocket editions, in fact includes additions that complete the first edition of 1721, hence the discrepancy in the numbering. Voltaire’s texts are cited sometimes in the recent and scholarly critical edition of Complete works published by the Voltaire Foundation (not listed in the final bibliography!), sometimes in the outdated edition by Louis Moland which dates from XIXe century, without the reader being able to in fine know which edition is being referred to in the footnotes, when the references are not obviously fanciful (p. 106: the Philosophical Dictionary is not found in volume 17 of Complete works of the Voltaire Foundation, etc.). It would have been desirable for the translation of the text to be accompanied by a systematic verification of these references.
The book therefore constitutes a fairly entertaining and sometimes stimulating gateway to the literature of XVIIIe century and especially to its asides forgotten by the literary canon, as the writers of the century themselves partly constituted it. But it would have required more scientific rigor to constitute a reference in the matter.