Rousseau's theatre for the Parisians: A study of the theatrical works of Jean -Jacques Rousseau.
Item
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Title
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Rousseau's theatre for the Parisians: A study of the theatrical works of Jean -Jacques Rousseau.
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Identifier
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AAI9946220
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identifier
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9946220
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Creator
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Schwartz, Jerry Martin.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Daniel Gerould
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Date
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1999
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Theater | Music | Literature, Romance
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Abstract
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Although Rousseau loved the theatre and worked in it throughout his life, he has been considered anti-theatrical by the great majority of theatre scholars. The result has been a general lack of interest in most of Rousseau's theatrical works. My study addresses the question of Rousseau's alleged anti-theatrical prejudice and attempts to resolve this paradox.;The study searches both within and beyond the texts of Rousseau's works to the world that inspired his plays and operas. I examine Rousseau's relationships with Jean Philippe Rameau and his patrons Le Riche and Mme de La Popliniere; the playwrights Voltaire and Marivaux; the salons of Mme Dupin and Mme d'Epinay; Rousseau's friends Diderot, Grimm, and d'Alembert; the composer Christoph Gluck and the English musicologist Charles Burney; as well as many other figures of the mid-eighteenth century. I explore the world of the French stage of this era, where old theatre forms and social conventions were being challenged; the world of the Paris salons, where the central debates concerning all things cultural took place; and the world of letters, where the great quarrels concerning Italian and French opera were argued.;Rousseau played a major role in all of these worlds. If at first Rousseau appeared to be allied with the philosophes, it soon became clear through his famous discourses that his program was at odds with theirs. In his famous Lettre a d'Alembert, the French stage received his heaviest barrage of criticism. Yet, in spite of Rousseau's assaults on the theatre, he continued to work as a dramatist and opera composer until the end of his life.;My thesis attempts to reconcile these apparent contradictions by searching within Rousseau's theatrical works for what jean Starobinski terms "the antidote in the poison," those subversive elements which are concealed within Rousseau's seemingly conventional theatre forms and which aimed at reforming the theatre and the society of his day.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
