Another universal genius, Denis Diderot, occupied a somewhat less exalted place in his own times, since most of his greatest works were published only posthumously. But his encylopaedic range is undeniable. He was a theorist of the bourgeois drama, the first great French art critic (the several Salons), a sharp observer of the psychology of repression and its political function in authoritarian society, and author of the greatest French antinovel of the century, which, influenced by Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, anticipates in its form and techniques and in its language both 20th-century realism and the mode of the nouveau roman (Jacques le fataliste et son maître [1796; Jacques the Fatalist and His Master]). Diderot seized on the Spinozist vision of a world materialistic and godless yet pulsating with energy and the unexpected. Jacques the Fatalist captures the fluidity of a disconcerting universe where nothing is ever clear-cut or under control, where history, in the form of choices already made by others, determines any individual’s fate, and yet free will and responsibility are among the highest human values. The admirable servant Jacques, who sees through yet loyally serves and protects his bonehead of a master and who establishes and maintains his own humane values, following his heart as well as his head in a world given over to cruelty and chance, is the model new man of the Enlightenment.
Diderot’s interest in the plasticity of matter (he reasoned that categories such as animal, vegetable, and mineral are not as distinct as conventional thought suggested), combined with an interest in biology and medicine, is nowhere better exemplified than in Le Rêve de d’Alembert (written 1769, published 1830; D’Alembert’s Dream). This work is written in the characteristic form of a dialogue, allowing Diderot to range free with speculative questions rather than attempt firm answers. Other dialogues focus on key contemporary events and explore the philosophical questions they posed. The Supplément au voyage de Bougainville (1773; Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage in The Libertine Reader: Eroticism and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France), for example, takes the great explorer’s landfall in Tahiti to consider the relativity of sexual mores in different societies and to satirize again politics founded on sexual repression.
In his own day, Diderot was best known as editor of the Encyclopédie, a vast work in 17 folio volumes of text and 11 of illustrations. He and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert inaugurated the undertaking, and d’Alembert introduced the first volume in 1751. Diderot edited alone from 1758 until the final volume of plates appeared in 1772. A summation of new scientific and technological knowledge and, by that very fact, a radically polemical enterprise, the Encyclopédie is the epitome of the Enlightenment, disseminating practical information to improve the human lot, reduce theological superstition, and, in Diderot’s words from his key article “Encyclopédie,” “change the common way of thinking.” Drama Tragedy and the survival of Classical form
Classical tragedy survived into the 18th century, most notably in the theatre of Voltaire, which dominated the Comédie-Française from the premiere of Oedipe (1718) to that of Agathocle (1779). But even in Voltaire a profound change in sensibility is apparent as pathos reigns supreme, to the exclusion of terror. Tragedy, in the view of Fontenelle or the Abbé Dubos, should teach men virtue and humanity. Voltaire’s Zaïre (1732; The Tragedy of Zara) aims to do just that, through the spectacle of Christian intolerance overwhelming the eponymous heroine, torn as she is between the religion of her French Roman Catholic forefathers and the Muslim faith of her future husband, a Turk. No fatality of character destroys her, but simply the failings of Christians unworthy of their creed, allied to gratuitous and avoidable chance. The great tragic emotions are replaced by simple bourgeois sentimentality. Marivaux and Beaumarchais
The best of 18th-century drama takes a different course. Pierre Marivaux wrote more than 30 comedies, mostly between 1720 and 1740, for the most part bearing on the psychology of love. Typically, the Marivaudian protagonist is a refined young lady who finds herself, to her bewilderment or even despair, falling in love despite herself, thereby losing her autonomy of judgment and action. La Surprise de l’amour, a title Marivaux used twice (1722, 1727), becomes a regular motif, the interest of each play resting in the precise and delicate changes of attitude and circumstance rung by the dramatist and the sharp, witty discourse in which his characters’ exchanges are couched. His sympathy for the generally likable heroes and heroines stops short, however, of indulgence. The action is dramatic essentially because the characters’ stubborn pride, central to their being, has to succumb to the demands of their instincts. Vanity, in Marivaux’s view, is endemic to human nature. In Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard (1730; The Game of Love and Chance), the plot of which is based on disguise, with masters and servants exchanging parts, Silvia experiences profound consternation at the quite unacceptable prospect of falling for a valet. When she learns the happy truth, her relief immediately gives way to a determination to force her lover Dorante into surrender while he still thinks her a servant. Many plays deal explicitly with social barriers created by rank or money, such as La Double Inconstance (1723; Changes of Heart) and Les Fausses Confidences (1737; “False Confidences”). As the subtlety of Marivaux’s perceptions and the genius of his language have become better understood, he has come to be regarded as the fourth great classic (after Corneille, Racine, and Molière) of the French theatre.
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais is best remembered for two comic masterpieces, Le Barbier de Séville (1775; The Barber of Seville) and Le Mariage de Figaro (1784; The Marriage of Figaro). Both are dominated by the servant Figaro, a scheming dynamo of wit and generosity. Some commentators during the Revolution detected prerevolutionary sentiments in The Marriage of Figaro, but the evidence is too insubstantial to argue for any intention on the author’s part. As much as the sharpness of wit and character, the brilliance of structure wins admiration. All is movement and vicissitude, particularly in The Marriage of Figaro, with its 92 scenes (about three times the average number in a Classical play) and profusion of theatrical “business” rising to the magisterial imbroglio of the final act. Bourgeois drama