The role of Racine in French and German criticism during the First Empire
Description
The object of the following study is to analyse the role of Racine in the works of the eight most influential literary critics in France and Germany during the reign of Napoleon I: J. W. von Goethe, F. Schiller, A.W. Schlegel, Mme de Stael, F-R. de Chateaubriand, B. Constant, P. de Barante and S. de Sismondi. These critics were important participants in the development of romanticism in France and they contributed to the redefinition of the methods and goals of literary criticism. Because of historical circumstances and individual personalities, the debate on classicism and romanticism gained a greater publicity than would have otherwise been the case. It is therefore justified to ask why literary criticism experienced such a far-reaching shift and how the transformation of criticism, and subsequently literature, was accomplished, as well as in what way the relationship between French and German critics determined the nature of romanticism in France The fundamental premise of this work is that French and German writers of the napoleonic era focused their critical and literary innovations on a rediscovery of the poetic power of Jean Racine. During the eighteenth century, French classical theater had become the standard against which most plays in France were judged. Some German critics had also attempted to transfer the rules of French classicism to the German theater. For the proponents of theatrical classicism, Racine was the writer most often proposed as a model and the French tragedian was the object of a critical cult, making him the symbol of classical perfection through submission to the formal rules of the seventeenth century, including the Aristotelian unities and the practice of imitation. In this way, the individual merits of the writer had been transformed into an example of the objective, universal aesthetic viewpoint of the eighteenth century classical critics and remained so, at least in France, until well into the nineteenth century. Any change in literary theory had, consequently, to deal with the function of Racine in literary criticism, the aesthetic theory implict in French classicism and the artistic value of the tragedian's works themselves The task of the Empire critics was complicated by the close relationship between literature and politics under Napoleon I. The period produced an overt desire, on the part of the French regime, to establish political control over most of Europe through military conquest. The successes of Napoleon's armies were directly linked to the conviction that the French nation, having overcome the chaos of the Revolution, could return to the power of France under Louis XIV. Since the emperor saw himself as the new Sun King, it is not surprising that the literary glories of the past were endowed with the same feeling of superiority as was the political destiny of France in Eurpoe, in fact this was merely an extension of the prominence of French literary fashion in eighteenth-century Europe. Imitation of Racine and submission to the emperor were judged to be inextricably joined, a fact acknowledged by both classical and romantic critics The role of Racine in the romantic criticism of the Empire will thus be useful in defining the changes in society and literature which took place after the French Revolution and led to the French romantic movement in the 1820s. It should be possible to explain some of the elements that distinguished French romanticism from its European counterparts. The example of Racine criticism during a short but important period also points out the process of evolution in literary and critical ideas. In this way both the specific nature of aesthetic change and the more general shift of the attitudes of an entire society can be seen. Coming to terms with the classical heritage was a major part of French literary development in the nineteenth century