Baroque and Classical Aesthetic Visions

Abstract

Although Wilfried Floeck in Esthetique de la diversite states that the literature of the mid-seventeenth century in France “est indeniablement marquee par le style baroque,” he points out that a baroque literary vision and a classical aesthetics coexisted and stimulated artistic creation.1 Evolving from the Renaissance crisis of knowledge and from principles of rhetoric, the Baroque existed in France as an independent literary and artistic vision between 1575–85 and 1650–60, and manifested itself in particular works rather than in a developed, organized, and established theory written at that time. The absence of such a codified manifesto is the logical consequence of the nature of the Baroque, which promoted liberty, diversity, imagination, and change. In contrast, classical aesthetics, insisting on order, clarity, proportion, and reason, consisted of homogeneous rules, first codified by Jean Chapelain in 1620,2 and reached its height in the literary texts written between 1660 and 1680. Emerging as a reaction against the Renaissance ideals of order and clarity, and then continuing its rebellion against the system of rules devised in reaction to contemporary notions of diversity and liberty by seventeenth-century French classicism, the Baroque released imprisoned imaginative forces activated by sense experiences and liberty.