Abstract
In his 1953 essay, Jean Rousset challenges the notion of a completed work in the context of French Baroque Literature. He argues that the baroque style, characterized by movement and instability, defies the traditional concept of a static, completed object. This thought-provoking analysis explores the relationship between the baroque movement and the idea of a finished work, raising questions about the nature of art and literature.
Extract
[...] Witnessing the metamorphosis of the world within a work: the Baroque as a tool for renewing literature 1. Achates, by Pierre le Moyne: the story of a metamorphosis through a fixed form such as the sonnet constitutes a good synthesis of the very essence of the Baroque (the term 'Baroque' in its modern sense can, incidentally, mean that elements do not seem well matched at first glance). 2. The Baroque, a fruit of a protean political and religious context, marked by instability (wars of religion, political instability, Galileo and Copernicus' discoveries?). [...]
[...] The baroque, by definition, constitutes a re-questioning of the work as a static, completed object A. The primacy of sentiment and emotion over the prescriptions of classical aesthetics: the baroque style exceeds the concept of work and genre perfectly 1. The use of sentiment and emotion permeates baroque works, as evidenced by the frequent use of stylistic figures such as metaphor, hyperbole, or neologism. The expression of sentiment takes precedence over realism: in Hamlet, the character learns the truth about his father's murder through an illusion ghost) 2. [...]
[...] From this point of view, Rousset develops the idea that a work constitutes by definition the completionthe completion of a principle, its final expression aiming to transmit the essence of its form. Or the Baroque precisely refuses the completioncompletion of the form in a fixed principle, each completion can be dePassand give rise to a new creation. From there, if it becomes a work, the baroque gesture takes on a definitive form, and in fact opposes its essence of never considering the final form to be achieved. But if the baroque advocates movement and irregularity, should we see it as a form of incompleteness? [...]
[...] The assertion of a new aesthetic 1. The Comic Novel, de Scarron: the nesting of stories, a break with the classical narrative structure (multiple narrative instances, a chatty and omnipresent narrator, etc.) 2. TheComic Illusion, de Corneille: a play situated at the crossroads of several genres (comedy, tragedy, parody, 3. In other words, the Baroque claims above all the porosity of genres, but this is interpreted by the classics as a non-form, irregular and whose contours do not conform to the usual requirements. [...]
[...] The baroque, an extension of the concept of work? Apollinien versus dionysiac 1. Concepts stemming from Nietzsche's reflections in The Birth of Tragedy. 2. The Baroque, an evolution of the perception of beauty? The Apollonian signals on the side of symmetry and order, while the Dionysian appeals to the senses and the spontaneous. 3. The Baroque would therefore be the introduction of a new aesthetic register that would be by nature irregular and désobwould be to classical forms. Therefore, the Baroque would inscribe itself in a dynamic of re-questioning the genres as they were practiced until the 16th century. [...]
