Literature, which influences and reflects mentalities, was crossed in the 17th century in France by the idea that love was a destructive passion, and the first encounter heralded misfortunes. In the following century, the feeling of love gradually became the bearer of a less and less negative meaning. Love emerges as the great affair of life and the literary topos of its birth metamorphoses. The last important publication on this subject was Their eyes met. The first sight scene in the novel (José Corti) by Jean Rousset, which dated from 1981 and covered a wide period, going up to the 20th century. For forty years no study has revisited this theme in the light of the recent history of emotions, gender, and the body. Here is the renewed critical perspective in a collective work which focuses on the 18th century alone. Interview with Elodie Ripoll, lecturer at the University of Trier and co-director of the book.
Why did you choose the 18th century as the turning point?
This is the moment when two expressions appear which have had a long fortune in the French language, “fall in love” et “thunderbolt”which associate the birth of love with the feeling of the body, which is completely new. It is both a break with the Cartesian theory of the passions, and with the separation between the soul and the body, a break made possible in particular by empiricism and the work of John Locke,
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