Rousseau's Idea of Theatre : From Criticism to Practice

Sammanfattning: As a critic of the moral consequences of Parisian theatre while writing plays and music for it, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) had a double relationship to the art form of theatre. This doctoral thesis argues that his seemingly double position towards the theatre is not necessarily contradictory. Building on previous research about Rousseau’s writings for the theatre, its main questions are ‘Why did Rousseau compose works for the French stage, while at the same time directing his critique towards it?’ and ‘How through his own theatrical works did Rousseau try to respond, aesthetically and practically, to the inherent problems that he saw in the theatre?’ Drawing on both Jean Starobinksi and Jacques Derrida, the study outlines a theoretical starting point through the concept of pharmakon. In its two-fold structure – simultaneously medicine and poison – the pharmakon can help us understand how Rousseau saw art, and theatre in particular, as potentially both harmful and useful to society. Starting from Rousseau’s broader perspective on the arts, the thesis uses his many writings on music, alongside his early theoretical works on art and on the development of human society. This shows that Rousseau’s neologism perfectibility, in addition to being an anthropological term describing a human faculty, is an aesthetic notion through which he writes his own history of the arts. By conceptualising this thought structure as aesthetic perfectibility, it is possible to demonstrate how Rousseau uses this notion to understand, expose and oppose systematised and universal rules of reason, beauty and taste. This is fundamental for our understanding of his dual relationship to theatre and to his sharp criticism of the Parisian stage in the Lettre à d’Alembert. This is because aesthetic perfectibility has the same structure as the pharmakon; applied in the wrong way it is harmful to humanity, but studied well and used with care, it can also be applied to remedy or at least partly reduce the harm it has already caused. Moving from a theoretical perspective towards a practical one, the final chapters of the thesis focus on some of Rousseau’s principal stage works: Le Devin du village, Pygmalion and Narcisse, ou L’Amant de lui même. These chapters show that Rousseau’s understanding of theatrical imitation suggests how he perceived the Parisian stage as morally dangerous, and why, in his own theatrical works, he tried to problematise and expose how theatrical imitation could be used as a tool to obtain power. Finally, the study argues that Rousseau’s creation of a new dramatic genre, the scène lyrique, can be seen as an attempt to make theatrical art approach musical imitation, in order to make it less harmful morally. The thesis concludes by arguing that the public festival should be perceived as part of the same pharmakon as theatre, and that in his own stage works Rousseau therefore experimented with conceptual elements borrowed from the festivals.