Rococo Fiction in France, 1600-1715: Seditious Frivolity

Rococo Fiction in France, 1600-1715: Seditious Frivolity by Allison Stedman, PhD makes a case for the rococo as a seventeenth-century literary phenomenon that provided an aesthetic and ideological counterpoint to the emergence of the classical-baroque style and the rise of French political absolutism. Tracing the rococo’s evolution over the course the seventeenth-century, and exploring its radicalization during the 1670s, 80s and 90s, the study unearths the rococo’s counter-vision for the origins and trajectory of the French Enlightenment.

The first part of the study investigates the common origins of classical-baroque and rococo literary aesthetics, revealing the importance that both styles place on the relationship between literary content and literary form. The second part of the study explores the impact that seventeenth-century rococo fiction had in creating the textually mediated social sphere that would serve as the foundation of the publicly critical culture of the French Enlightenment. The study concludes with an investigation of the influx of salon sociability into the textually mediated social sphere during the 1690s, examining the role that rococoliterature played in transfiguring the salon from an exclusive social circle mediated by physical presence to an inclusive social diaspora mediated by texts.