Portraiture as Frame and Portal in La Bruyère Open Access
Kazanjian, Michael H. (2010)
Published
Abstract
Abstract
Portraiture As Frame And Portal In La Bruyère
By Michael H. Kazanjian
La Bruyère develops a theory and a practice of portraiture in
order to effectuate
individual change through the moralist critique of his text, Les
Caractères ou les moeurs
de ce siècle. His hybrid genre melds the traditions of
character writing and literary
portraiture, and incorporates the mode of visual portraiture in
painting. La Bruyère
manipulates portrait frames in order to multiply and extend the
perspectives onto his
subjects. This method of focalizing his readers' attention allows
certain portraits to serve
as portals opening upon self and society. Although the extreme
social cohesiveness
during this time, characterized by Jean-Paul Sartre as a
cérémonie de reconnaissance,
precluded the emergence of characters with psychological
interiority, La Bruyère extends
the boundaries of the aesthetic depiction of an individual. His
satirical characters surpass
the clé readings upon which many of his contemporaries
focused, and La Bruyère aims
instead at some of the larger structures of his society. Even as
his portraits extend the
lexical field for portraying a character, they also serve as
semiotic distillations of social
knowledge. In his portraits we find La Bruyère's absorption in
critical issues concerning
the aesthetic representational system that governed French society
during the apogee of
Louis XIV's reign. Foremost is his articulation of a certain
temporal malaise - a focus on
the punctual that threatens the notion of continuity essential for
both the intelligibility of
the self as well as for the legitimacy of the monarchy. Yet La
Bruyère also bears witness
to what we might call the tyranny of reciprocal vision in a society
obsessed with
appearance. Many of the characters in Les Caractères
attempt to manipulate the system
of signs to effect a change in their social status, thus exploiting
the representational
system's basis of truth in the mode of plausibility and
verisimilitude. La Bruyère issues
his own moralist challenge to his readers: il faut savoir
lire. To read Les Caractères as
merely symptomatic of late seventeenth-century French society is to
fail to appreciate
how his text participates in the aesthetic and cultural
transformation to the eighteenth
century.
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
La Bruyère's portraits: "…il faut savoir lire…"
4
CHAPTER ONE: THE PORTRAIT IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 13
Writing across genres 13
The moralist 13
Character writing 16
The literary portrait 22
Portraiture in painting 24
La Bruyère's portrait theory: the Préface 26
The portrait of Narcissus 38
Narcissus as topos 39
The temporality of Narcissus 43
CHAPTER TWO: NARCISSUS AS PORTAL: DE LA VILLE 54
Narcissus continued… 54
Portrait and frame 54
Structure 58
Narcissus' narrative duration 62
The Sannions 70
The object of critique 74
Des ouvrages de l'esprit 76
CHAPTER THREE: PORTRAITS AND LES GRANDS SUJETS 82
A history of the self 82
Truth: être 85
Égésippe 85
Æmile: the notion of merit 88
Giton and Phédon 95
Truth: paraître 96
Acis, Arrias and Théodecte 97
Hermagoras: a visual echo 99
Troïle and Montaigne 102
Ménophile 103
Interiority 105
Émire 105
Drance 106
De l'homme 109
CONCLUSION 117
WORKS CITED 124
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