Description
At the Maison Française d’OxfordOrganised by Marine Ganofsky (St Andrews) and Jean-Alexandre Perras (Oxford)
Keynote lecture: Prof. Patrick Wald Lasowski (Paris 8): Palpable !
Whilst Voltaire observed that ‘lightness and fickleness shaped the character of that agreeable nation’ (none other than France), Caraccioli remarked that ‘for a long time, French people have been accused of lightness, and for a long time they have not cared to mend their ways’. If lightness became such a crucial national issue in eighteenth-century France, it is in great part because of its connection with ‘civic virtues’ which were then thought to depend upon this inconstancy. The French nation would be too fickle to be seriously evil. However, the alleged lightness of the ‘siècle’ was far from inspiring unanimous praise. Many would rather condemn the inconsequential spirit of the times. Lightness emerged from all these discussions as one of the paradigms around or against which the entire century was defining itself. Furthermore, this interest for the question of lightness did not concern debates on morals alone, but reappeared instead in all fields of human knowledge. Whereas ‘amateurs’ or art critics extolled the ‘lightness’ of certain paintings, scientists investigated lightness as a potential property of matter. And, at the end of this Age of Lightness, the Montgolfier brothers’ balloons and others aerostats could be seen floating weightlessly over enchanted and enthusiastic crowds. The lightest century is also the one who first lifted itself to the sky.
Significantly, subsequent periods would also define themselves in relation to this paradigm, thereby resuming the construction of the French eighteenth century not just as the Age of Enlightenment, but instead as the Age of Lightness. Between the bourgeois nineteenth century nostalgically dreaming of bygone fêtes galantes, and our own early twenty first century celebrating the frivolity (and marketability) of Marie-Antoinette’s and Fragonard’s images, the last century of the Ancien Régime has never ceased to exert its charms upon the public. Finally, for a few decades now, the fascinated focus of scholars, novelists, filmmakers and artists has brought to the fore that particular aspect of the French eighteenth century, thereby contributing to the ever-expanding diffusion of these representations.
Thus the lightness of the French eighteenth century not only appears to be the object of a multi-faceted conquest (at once scientific, moral, aesthetic, …); it also imposes itself as an historically constructed paradigm, giving rise to many questions, that we propose to explore from a critical and historiographical point of view.
With the support of:
Maison française d’Oxford
Society for French Studies
TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities)
The Voltaire Foundation
| Period | 15 May 2015 |
|---|---|
| Event type | Other |
| Sponsor |