Part One of George Poe's study proposes a working definition of -rococo- for the various arts and then provides a detailed look at the critical development of the so-called rococo litteraire since the 1920s. Part Two is a parallel reading of rococo decor (for the rococo is an originally French interior-decorative art) and of a contemporary literary corpus (Marivaux's comedic art) showing formal convergences between these two types of cultural texts as well as mutually operative aesthetic principles. The formal patterns can be seen as representing creative responses of the same general nature to consonant psychocultural demands. The aim, then, is to strengthen the case for extending the -rococo- label beyond the decorative arts to the Kindred patterns found in eighteenth-century French literary expression."

Rococo Fiction in France reconfigures the history of the "long eighteenth century" by revealing the rococo as a literary phenomenon that characterized a range of experimental texts from the end of the French Renaissance to the eve of the French Revolution. Tracing the literary rococo's evolution from the late 1500s to the early 1700s, and exploring its radicalization during the 1670s, '80s, and '90s, Allison Stedman unearths the seventeenth century rococo's counter-vision for the trajectory of the French monarchy and the dawn of the French Enlightenment. The first part of the study investigates the relationship between Montaigne's philosophy of literary production and those of early seventeenth-century "table-talk" novelists, libertine writers, and playwrights involved in the quarrel over Corneille's play Le Cid. She thus establishes the existence of a rococo philosophy of literary production whose goal was to innovate, to bring pleasure, and to create communities. The second part of the study explores the impact that the Duchess de Montpensier's literary portrait galleries, Jean Donneau de Vis 's periodical the Mercure Galant, and other forms of rococo literary production--by such authors as Charles Sorel, Alcide de Saint-Maurice, J.N. de Parvial and Jean de Pr chac--had in the creation of a textually mediated social sphere that served as the foundation of the publicly critical culture of the French Enlightenment. The study concludes with an investigation of the influx of salon sociability into the textually mediated social sphere during the 1690s. Stedman examines the role of interpolated literary fairy tales, proverb plays and other rococo publication strategies--in such late seventeenth-century women writers as d'Aulnoy, Lh ritier, Murat, and Durand--in transfiguring the salon from an exclusive social circle mediated by physical presence to an inclusive social diaspora mediated by texts. Rococo Fiction in France challenges established views of early modern French literary history and discusses a range of little known works in a generous and engaging manner.

"The idea for this exhibition grew out of the desire to present to the Atlanta public an old master exhibition that would complement the new High Museum designed by Richard Meier. . . This exhibition concentrates on the period from 1700 to 1792, when the Revolution toppled the 'ancien régime' and the neo-classical style nascent in Vien's work blossomed into the severe style of David, who, as the portrait shown here makes evident, was himself firmly rooted in the rococo tradition." -- Foreword.

The Other Rise of the Novel relies on new research concerning the relevance of bourgeois values and ideals in the early modern period in France to question the extent to which characters in works of fiction portray the rise of individualistic and self-interested behavior.

Architecture in France in the Eighteenth Century Wend von Kalnein French architecture of the eighteenth century - which exhibited great technical ability and refined taste - influenced architectural style throughout Europe. This handsome book is a survey of the French architecture of the period. It begins with the origins of the 'style moderne' under the last years of Louis XIV, discusses the end of Rococo and the return to antiquity, and concludes with the Revolutionary architecture and the house of Madame Récamier. Kalnein describes the development of palace and hôtel architecture by the two great architects de Cotte and Boffrand, discussing such large urban projects as the reconstruction of Rennes and the Places Royales. He traces the return to antiquity (which began when the scholars of the Académie d'Architecture were sent to Rome), the revolutionary architecture with its grand, but never executed, projects, and the shift from neoclassicism to early romanticism. Kalnein also examines the decorative arts of the period, which became even more important than architecture in the Rococo period. Focusing on such architects as Boffrand, Gabriel, and Redoux, he shows how a study of their building decoration illuminates the evolution of 'style moderne,' the battle between Rococo and Neoclassicism, and the dissemination of French styles throughout Europe.