Eighteenth-Century French Literary Criticism

The Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns was an early skirmish in the long contest between authority and observation that came with the invention of the scientific method and which culminated with the legitimization of the notion of progress. Nicolas Boileau (1636–1711), also known as Despréaux, championed the Ancients. His Art poétique (The art of poetry) and his translation of Le traité du sublime (Treatise on the sublime) (attributed to the Greek writer Longinus, 1st century C.E.) solidified his reputation as defender of traditional forms and classical rhetoric.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux's Œuvres diverses du sieur Dxxx [Despréaux ] avec le traité du sublime ou du merveilleux dans le discours, vol. 1

Frontispiece of Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux's Œuvres diverses du sieur Dxxx [Despréaux ] avec le traité du sublime ou du merveilleux dans le discours, vol. 1 (Amsterdam: Antoine Schelte, 1697).

Courtesy of the Basilica Museum - Mullock Library, St. John's, NL.

Gustave Lanson (1857–1934), the father of French literary history, said Boileau’s literary doctrine was the one that best suited the French mind. A student of the classics, Boileau revered Latin masters such as Horace, Juvenal, and Martial and used their work as models for his satires. After the satires, Boileau adopted the more personal form of the epistle, but his work continued its polemical stance and its aggressively ironic commentary on his time and his peers. Though adulated in his lifetime, by Mullock’s day Boileau’s star had already begun to fade and his name no longer appeared next to those of the greats of his generation: Racine, La Fontaine, La Fayette, and Molière. This book, which was more than 100 years old when Mullock acquired it, brings together in one binding the two volumes of Boileau’s Œuvres diverses (Collected works).

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux's Œuvres diverses du sieur Dxxx [Despréaux ] avec le traité du sublime ou du merveilleux dans le discours, vol. 1

Title page of Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux's Œuvres diverses du sieur Dxxx [Despréaux ] avec le traité du sublime ou du merveilleux dans le discours, vol. 1 (Amsterdam: Antoine Schelte, 1697).

Courtesy of the Basilica Museum - Mullock Library, St. John's, NL.

It includes the mock-heroic Le lutrin (The lectern), which mobilizes a vast array of rhetorical devices to recount a frivolous dispute between a prelate and a cantor over the placement of a piece of furniture, and concludes with Boileau’s occasional verses in French and Latin. The book shows signs of sustained use and is in fragile condition. A few pages have been removed and L’art de précher / à un Abbé (The art of preaching / to an abbot) by Pierre de Villiers inserted between pages 192 and 193 of the first volume. This section and canto 3 of Art poétique bear most of the book’s marginal markings (mostly in pencil), which may have been made by Mullock or a previous owner. Most of the second volume is devoted to the translation of Longinus’s text and to commentary on it. Boileau exerted great influence on eighteenth-century English literary criticism, particularly on Alexander Pope, in whose works Mullock was particularly interested. Mullock most likely purchased this volume before his ordination in 1830.