History of Aesthetics Before The 20th Century - French Writers

French Writers

In France aesthetic speculation grew out of the discussion by poets and critics on the relation of modern art; and Boileau in the 17th century, the development of the dispute between the "ancients" and the "moderns" at the end of the 17th century by B. le Bouvier de Fontenelle and Charles Perrault, and the continuation of the discussion as to the aims of poetry and of art generally in the 18th century by Voltaire, Bayle, Diderot and others, not only offer to the modern theorists valuable material in the shape of a record by experts of their aesthetic experience, but disclose glimpses of important aesthetic principles. Yves Marie André's Essay on Beauty was an exploration of visual, musical, moral, and intellectual beauty. A more systematic examination of the several arts (corresponding to that of Lessing) is to be found in the Cours de belles lettres of Charles Batteux (1765), in which the meaning and value of the imitation of nature by art are further elucidated, and the arts are classified (as by Lessing) according as they employ the forms of space or those of time.