THOUGHTS, MAXIMS, CHARACTERS: FRAGMENTATION AS A PRINCIPLE OF MORAL NARRATIVE IN THE 17TH CENTURY FRENCH LITERATURE

Abstract

The article is devoted to the understanding of the aesthetic phenomenon of the 17th century French literature, which consists in the close connection of the fragmentary form with the ethical content of discourse. The corpus of aphoristic texts created in 1656–1697, i.e. the books “Thoughts” by Blaise Pascal, “Maxims” by François de La Rochefoucauld, as well as “Characters or Mores of the present century” by Jean de La Bruyère are chosen as the object of research. In the process of work we systematise the methods of analysing this phenomenon in the Western and Russian traditions: the “cratylist” approach (Gilbert Romeyer Dherbey and Jean Starobinski), the “medical” method (Louis Van Delft, Mariya Neklyudova), “new publishing schemes” (Emmanuel Bury), as well as “secular” (Robert Garapon). We note the influence of topics which has established itself as a method of scientific discourse and gnomic genres of a didactic nature. In the result, we show that the French aphoristic texts of the 17th century clearly differ from the previous tradition by an attitude towards anthropological aestheticism and the absence of a didactic purpose.