Description
Throughout the eighteenth century, libertine authors multiplied scenes in which the refined nature of a garden invites protagonists to soft abandonments, thus supporting seductive endeavours and the fulfilment of unlawful desires. From Crébillon’s to Louvet de Couvray’s novels, the theme of the garden’s enticement has gone through countless literary variations. Enclosed, allegedly severed from the profane world, protected from the indiscretions of the sun as of curious eyes by foliages and shadows, the eighteenth-century garden, with its groves and wooden paths, represented an ideal setting for the clandestine pleasures which compose the matter of libertine literature.Yet in this erotic fiction, as my paper will show, the topos of seductive gardens moves rapidly beyond the simple and obvious notions of shelter and secrecy. Although these advantages are central to galantes affairs, I will explain that through fictional gardens, libertine authors alluded to the complex reality of eighteenth-century libertinage and its system. The art of the garden appears indeed as the perfect mirror-image of the libertine art of love. Thus, when their characters long to flee in the indulgent comfort of a garden, we can notice that these seek more than nature’s discretion in such a space. I will argue that their patent fondness for gardens or tamed woods owes to the fact that these libertine heroes can find in the figure of the garden a complicit echo of their own erotic philosophy and seductive stratagems.
In this presentation, I will go through various features of an eighteenth-century garden (as described or fantasised by libertine authors), in order to show how each of these features can be imagined to reflect an important element of libertine liaisons. Illusionistic appearances, secrecy and shadows, studied disorder and natural instincts, ‘égarements’ and labyrinths, pagan gods and sacralised reality, are elements which I will explore in this paper to develop an analogy between fantasised gardens and fictionalised libertinage.
In parallel, I will consider the horticultural evolution that was sweeping through France in the eighteenth century, and which led to the replacement of the French formal garden with the English Romantic landscape. The latter, with its woods, hills, groves and false disorder seems particularly well suited to libertine needs. Yet, as I propose to ponder, is eighteenth-century libertinage not often remembered through Les Liaisons dangereuses, a novel which flaunts the existence of strict and severe rules beneath the apparent insouciance of pleasures? In fact, this paper will explore how both the gardener and the libertine lover challenged the gap between sprezzatura and efforts, between nature and civilisation, instincts and control.
| Period | Jan 2012 |
|---|---|
| Event title | ‘Gardens in French Libertine Fiction: Reflections of the Libertine System’ 41st British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference, St Hugh’s College, Oxford |
| Event type | Other |
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