Description: This volume brings together a set of studies that aim to redefine the French doctrine classique, no longer taking its foundations and rules as the point of departure for describing it, but instead defining it negatively, focusing on everything that it condemns but also finds fascinating.
Brief description: Carine Barbafieri is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France and a senior lecturer at the University of Valenciennes, France. Her current research focuses on 17th century French theatre and on the notion of taste in early modern France. Jean-Yves Vialleton is senior lecturer at the University of Grenoble, France (universite Grenoble-Alpes). His research interests include 17th century French theatre, rhetoric in early modern period and the interrelationship between biography and folklore.
Review Quotes: Critiquer, selon la definition du Dictionnaire universel de Furetiere, signifie juger d'un ouvrage, en examiner, en corriger les defauts . C'est aux multiples defauts qui menacent l'oeuvre de l'age classique qu'est consacre le present volume. Les etudes qu'il reunit redefinissent la doctrine classique (envisagee de facon large, de ses sources antiques, en particulier rhetoriques, jusqu'a son triomphe et sa remise en question a l'age des Lumieres), non plus en recherchant ses fondements ou ses regles, mais en s'interessant a sa part maudite. Elles mettent aussi en evidence l'existence d'un anticlassicisme au sein meme de la litterature classique.