Conference Prospectus

1.  Title of Event:

Le Classicisme des modernes / Classicism and the Moderns

2.  Date: May 20-21, 2005

3.  Organizers:

Pierre Force, Chair, Department of French and Romance Philology, Columbia University; Jean-Charles Darmon, Professor of French, Université de Versailles, member of Institut universitaire de France.

4.  Venues: Reid Hall and Bibliothèque municipale de Versailles

5.  Statement of Purpose:

The Department of French and Romance Philology of Columbia University, the Department of French of Université de Versailles, the Institut universitaire de France, the Société d’étude du XVIIe siècle, and the CELLF 17-18 of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique hereby submit a proposal for a two-day colloquium to be held at Reid Hall and Versailles in May 2005.

The Classical period (1660-1680) has an almost unique status in the history of French literature. The canon of classical authors established by Voltaire in his Siècle de Louis XIV in 1751 (Corneille, Molière, Racine, La Fontaine, Boileau, etc.) has remained virtually unchanged to this day. In addition, for a very long time, only the classical authors mentioned above were taught in French schools and universities. Other authors and historical periods were ignored. As a consequence, in French literary history, every literary or critical movement must say where it stands with respect of the classical canon. Classicism can be rejected, embraced, or transformed, but it is always the point of reference.

The purpose of this colloquium is to analyze and contextualize the various representations of French Classicism that had currency in the United States and France in the twentieth century. In particular, the colloquium will seek to trace the history of the Modern/Classical dichotomy in this context, and the ways in which various literary and critical movements identified themselves as “modern” in contradistinction to a “classical” norm.

What is Classicism? How can one identify it? What values does it carry? How far is it from the concerns of our time?  The twentieth history is now far enough in time for us to take a historical look at how the “moderns” of the twentieth century viewed the “classics” of the seventeenth century. The ultimate purpose of this “triangulation” is to allow us to form a better understanding of what it is to be modern at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

It is now becoming clear that the Modern/Classical dichotomy that informs much of twentieth-century literary and critical discourse was in many ways artificial, conventional, and insufficiently historical. Yet it would be naïve to criticize these twentieth-century representations of the siècle de Louis XIV with the purpose of replacing them with a timeless “essence” of Classicism. A central goal of the colloquium is to show that these various representations of Classicism were extremely productive, both aesthetically and philosophically. We hope to begin telling the complex story of the representations of Classicism in literature (from Proust to Valéry and Quignard) and critical theory (from Blanchot to Foucault, Barthes, Marin, and others).

The Franco-American dimension of this project is an essential one. French thinkers like Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Louis Marin have had a very strong influence on critical theory as it is practiced in the United States, and some of their concepts like “Classical representation” or “Classical episteme” are widely used and accepted. Yet few critics are aware of the fact that these concepts reflect the conventional representation of Classicism that was prevalent in France in the mid-twentieth century. On the other hand, the study of French Classicism had its own, separate history in the United States, starting with the publication of Le Classicisme français by Yale’s Henri Peyre (New York: Editions de la Maison française, 1942). Critics like Columbia’s Nathan Edelman, and his student Jules Brody thought of Classicism as a problematic notion, and favored a conceptual approach to Classicism at a time when the dominant approach in France was positivistic and empirical. More recently, Joan DeJean (U Penn) and Domna Stanton (CUNY) have advocated an expansion of the Classical canon. Today, the dialogue between French and American specialists of the Classical period is a lively one, and it is our hope that this colloquium will make it even livelier.  

We expect the Colloquium to appeal not only to scholars but also to those in the general public who have an interest in French Classicism. We have chosen venues that are more welcoming to the general public than a university campus environment: for the first day, the Salle de conférences of Reid Hall (rue de Chevreuse, Paris); for the second day, the Salle de France of the Bibliothèque municipale in Versailles (rue de l’Indépendance américaine, Versailles). In addition to its convenience, the public library of Versailles (formerly Hôtel des affaires étrangères et de la marine) is a perfect location symbolically, since it is the place where the treaty recognizing American independence was drafted in 1783.