Literature in France - Rationalist
Literary Movement - French Literary Works
French Rationalist Writers
| 18th Century French Literature | Rationalist Literary Circles | Authors of
the Enlightenment | Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu | The Philosophes
| The Age of Reason
With the dawn of the 18th century came a turning
point in French literature. The attitude of literary circles
took on a more questioning quality, looking forwards into
the future, with a slight hint of revolutionary aspects. It
was a way of challenging traditional beliefs, of casting aside
the existing assumptions and making way for rationalization,
for the Age of Reason, otherwise known as the Enlightenment.
Very powerful and influential writings broaching
both political and philosophical subjects were produced during
this time by the great rationalists of France, namely Voltaire,
Rousseau and Montesquieu. During this period, theatre and
other fictional writing also evolved. Noted playwrights of
the time, of both comedies and tragedies included Antoine
Houdar de La Motte, Buyrette de Belloy, Pierre de Marivaux
and Pierre de Beaumarchais. The novel gained popularity as
the period progressed and by the turn of the century was one
of the main literary forms used in France. The memoir also
emerged as an important literary genre, with writers such
as Mathieu Marais, Edmond Barbier, and Jean François
Marmontel excelling at this literary form.
The main representatives of the Enlightenment in France were
known as the Philosophes, a special group of writers who would
attack the abstract systems of philosophy. To them, ideas
were to be judged according to how useful they were to society.
The main forms used by the Philosophes to manifest their ideas
were the use of treatises, pamphlets and also using fictional
forms such as the short story.
In France, the chief representatives of the Enlightenment
were the Philosophes, writers who attacked abstract systems
of philosophy and judged the worth of ideas by their social
utility, dismissing the work of philosophers like Aristotle,
Descartes, and (in their own day) Leibniz as harmful fictions,
and promoting the empiricists Bacon, Locke, and Newton.
The Philosophes expressed their views in two
ways: through treatises and pamphlets, and through the fictional
forms of the novel and the short story.
