52 - The rhetorical ideal in France

Summary

In seventeenth-century France the evolution of rhetoric and the ideal based on it are, at first, strongly influenced by earlier developments in Italian humanism and by Jesuit theories and pedagogy. But it is important to note that interest in the ars bene dicendi comes to a head in a clearly visible way and takes on peculiar force in the fourth decade of the century, with the founding in 1635 of the French Academy. External conditions were favourable for a new cultural initiative: after the religious wars of the sixteenth century, France was entering a period of pacification, of relative prosperity, of movement towards political unity. It was also a period marked by the emergence of educated and active élites – in the magistrature, in the clergy, in certain elements of the aristocracy, especially those associated with the court. A design, national in scope and centred on the king as a strong monarch – not yet le roi soleil, but Louis XIV was on his way – was being promoted by Richelieu and others. As a newly created source of intellectual and literary guidance, the Academy soon defined its mission in a way that not only fitted perfectly into the national programme, but also promoted actively what we are calling here the rhetorical ideal. By the instruments of its fourfold project – which called for the creation of a Dictionary and a Grammar, to be followed by treatises on Rhetoric and Poetics – the Academy sought to make possible a culture based on éloquence.