Entre crise du vers classique et logique(s) de la prose : le genre pastoral en prose français (de la fin du XVIe siècle au premier romantisme)

Abstract

The renewed interest in the pastoral genre is the occasion to focus on an understudied aspect of its tradition: the composition, in France, of narrative, dramatic and lyric pastorals written in prose. In light of the crisis of classical verse that many deemed impossible to amend, a certain number of writers resorted to prose so as to salvage poetry. In itself, the pastoral genre, whose naïve aesthetics seemed to call for prose as its alleged natural material, provided the ideal chance to demonstrate the validity of this practice. As early as the 16th century, this genre became the favorite locus of the debate between verse and prose, the latter defeating the former. Already justified during the Baroque period by the existence of the pastoral novel — in prose, but purporting to be poetic — this aesthetics also developed, from the 17th century to the early Romantic age, in drama and lyricism through translations and original pieces as is illustrated by the vogue for idylls in prose inspired by Gessner in the second half of the 18th century. More specifically, new literary forms appeared, such as pastoral epics of biblical inspiration and new type of « pastoral novels » theorized by Florian, pieces in « poissard » style introduced by Vadé, lyric « scenes » and « tableaux ». However, under the French Revolution and Empire, the use of prose was to shed its role as savior of the poetic genre in order to develop its own threefold logic: triumph of the narrative novel, primacy of realism over imagination and death of the sense of poetry.

Keywords

• French prose poetry
• dramatic pastoral
• poetic novel
• epic pastoral
• idyll
• prose theory