Abstract EN:

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, French public sphere was marked by references to "Le siècle de Louis XIV”. This dissertation focuses on the structural ambiguities of the formula's consecration between Thermidor and the beginnings of the Restoration. "Le siècle de Louis XIV" was more a bone of contention than a memorial elevated by consensus to the glory of the Classics. The conflict in question is not, however, that of the Classicists against the Romantics but rather that of two irreconcilable versions of the Classical Tradition. Disputed between the apostles of the catholic revival and the heirs of the Enlightenment, literature from "le siècle de Louis XIV" was used in the service of contradictory regimes of exemplarity. What are the words and the tools of appraisal that can enable one to name and assess it ? Moreover, to what extent can this category, "le siècle de Louis XIV", bear the process of historicisation as it is de facto both the wavering subject of a sacralization which absolves it from the weight of History, and that of a more secularized admiration ? The present study introduces and analyzes the implications of "Siècle de Louis XIV"'s oscillating nature. Beyond the mere interpretation of Classicism, it is the definition of post-Belles-Lettres "Littérature" itself which is at stake.