Durham E-Theses Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereusus and the development of the French novel Rodmell, Graham How to cite: Rodmell, Graham (1967) Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereusus and the development of the French novel, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7981/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk HI. LES LIAISONS DAffGEREUSES AND THE DEVELOPMENT OP THE NOVEL IN FRANCE The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 522 III 1. INTRODUCTION It is not our aim, in the third and final section of this work, to attempt to give a panoramic view of the whole, complicated history of the French novel in the eighteenth century. Rather, we shall try to suggest certain factors discernible in this history and then go on to examine certain of Laclos's predecessors, contemporaries and successors in the domain of prose fiction in the light of Les Liaisons dangereuses. For this purpose we shall in fact not confine ourselves solely to the eighteenth century, but shall also look at the nineteenth and, very "briefly, the twentieth. It is hoped that, as a result of this examination, Laclos's novel will be seen for what it is, a work which, for all its fine qualities, is not an isolated phenomenon but a very good example - perhaps the best example - of a type of novel which is by no means rare in the eighteenth century, and a type of novel the influence of which continues to be felt long after the end of that century. It seems all the more important to attempt this inso far as the tendency has been for critics, almost without exception, to treat Les Liaisons in more or less complete isolation. The eighteenth century is a period in which the novel is, as it were, trying to find its feet. If, as Daniel Mornet has shown(l), the most striking feature of the French novel during this period is its 1, D. Mornet, in his introduction to his edition of La Nouvelle Heloise 4 vols., Paris, 1985 523 diversity, and if, for that matter, in the early years of 'the century, novelists such as Mile de Scudery, Gomberville and La Calprenede of the previous century still retained a considerable degree of popularity(3> it is nevertheless true that certain clear trends can be discerned. One of the chief of these developments, in fact dating back no doubt to the 1670s in certain of its aspects, was a trend towards what can only be called realism, realism in the sense of an attempt to situate the events of the plot in a recognisable historical or contemporary setting, and also psychological realism. Many facets of this tendency are dealt with by Georges May in his book Le Dilemme du Roman au XVIIIe Siecle, and in particular he makes out a good case for the view that realism in the eighteenth-century novel stems much more from literary than from sociological causes(2)« If, in 1734) Lenglet-Dufresnoy could argue that the novel was essentially "un poeme herolque en prose"(3), such an argument was, as May puts it, "vieux d'au moins soixante-dix ans"(4). Lenglet- Duf resnoy's attitude was a reaction against what had been, in the seventeenth century, one of the main lines of attack against the nov#l on aesthetic grounds, an attack based on the hierarchical view of literary genres and on the fact that .tkafr the novel had not been 1. ibid,, I, 10-11. 2. G. May, Le Dilemme du Roman au XVIIIe Siecle. Btude sur les Rapports du Roman et de la Critique (1715-1761), New Haven (Oonn,) and Paris, 1963, PP. 162-181. 3. N. Lenglet-Dufresnoy, De 1'Usage des Romans..., 2 vols., Amsterdam, 1734, I, 188. 4. G. May, op. cit., p. 34. 524 consecrated as a genre by Aristotle or Horace. In consequence of this attitude, the "best that could be hoped for by the novel was a reception taking the form of condescending tolerance, exemplified by Boileau's remark in canto III of the Art poetique (line 119)s "Dans un roman frivole aisement tout s'excuse." But if it was still possible, even as late as the 1730s, for critics like Bruzen de La Martiniere in his Introduction generale a, l'etude des sciences et des belles lettres (1731) and Poree in his De libris qui vulgo dicuntur Romanses (1736) to attack the novel as an ignoble genre which was likely to corrupt the taste of its readers(l), the fact of the matter is that the novelists themselves were by this time abandoning attempts such as that of Lenglet-Dufresnoy to win acceptance for the novel by associating it with the epic and, in reply to other common criticisms of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, were more and more tending to put forward realism as the aesthetic criterion by which they were to be judged. This is not, of course, to suggest that there is a sudden change of tack to which a precise date can be put. There is still evidence, in the 1730s, of novelists seeking to find a place for their productions within the accepted hierarchy of literary genres, but even in terms of *fiis effort there is a tendency for the tactics to change. Not infrequen ly it is with comedy that novelists seek to associate their work, rather than with the epic. This can be seen, for example, in the following 1. cf. G. May, op. cit., pp. 16-17. 525 quotation from the remarks with which Crebillon flis prefaces Les flgarements du Coeur et de 1'Esprit (first published 1736-8), to the effect that M... le roman, si meprise des personnes sensees, et souvent avec justice, seroit peut-etre celui de tous les genres qu'on pourroit rendre le plus utile, s'il etoit bien manie, si, au lieu de" le remplir de situations tenebreuses et forcees, de heros dont les caracteres et les aventures sont toujours hors du vraisemblablef on le rendait comme la comedie, le tableau de la vie humaine, et qu'on y censurat les vices et les ridicules." Here, in fact, Crebillon is not only seeking to associate the novel with comedy(l). He is also, especially when he goes on to urge that the novelist should strive to show "l'homme tel qu il est"(2), profess• ing a realist aim and ±ny[ addition, in the relatively lengthy passage quoted above and in his earlier assertion that he seeks to combine 11 M 1'utile et l'amusant (3), making a moral claim for his workr which is another aspect of the development of the eighteenth-century novel about which we propose to say something shortly. The movement in the direction of realism takes various forms. One of these is the conflict already taking place in the seventeenth century between the courtly and the sentimental on the one hand, represented by writers such as Mile de Scudery and Honore d'Urfe, and the anti- courtly and the picaresque on the other, represented by writers such as Scarron and Furetiere and continued in some measure in the 1. As we have already seen, Laclos, almost half a century later, defending his portrayal of characters in his letters to Mme Riccoboni, makes great play with a comparison between his approach and that of Moliere* 2. In Oeuvres completes de M. de Crebillon fils, Maestricht, 1779, 526 eighteenth by Lesage and Marivaux. In addition, nouvelles historiques such as lime de La Fayette's La Princesse de Cleves (1678) had dealt with historical characters in historical settings, and in 1713 Hamilton brought out his Memoires du Chevalier de Gramont, which purports to outline the love life of the court of Charles II of Bngland(l). This work is an excellent illustration of the way in which the dividing line between history and fiction in the early eighteenth century was a hazy line indeed. It may ,we 11 be, in this case, rather more than a novelisfs device when, at the end of his opening chapter, Hamilton, writing of Gramont himself, professes, "C'est lui-meme... qu'il faut ecouter dans cet ecrit; puisque je ne fais que tenir la plume, a mesure qu'il me dicte les particularity les plus singulieres et les moins connues de sa vie"(2), since it is quite possible that Hamilton did have access to his friend's personal papers and perhaps too, even, did have the actual verbal assistance which he claims. yIt must be stressed that the fluidity 1. Hamilton's authorship of this work has been questioned, but a good case can be made out for it: cf.