‘Prends l'éloquence et tords-lui son cou’, wrote Verlaine. One striking feature of modern French literary history is the disappearance of eloquence or oratory. Of course, eloquent writing persists in the theatre and in written genres such as the novel, essay, pamphlet, newspaper article, or even occasionally poetry, but one would look in vain for chapters on eloquence in most accounts of modern literature.
In the ancien régime and even the 19th c. it was different. Rhetoric taught poetry and eloquence as the two parts of what came to be known as literature. The Académie Française offered prizes in both fields. The two were customarily distinguished (‘Poets are born, orators are made’), but the dividing-line was unclear, and critics, theorists, and teachers such as Rapin, Perrault, or Batteux moved to and fro between them.
Eloquence, like theatre, is a performance art; indeed, the classical theatre was a major forum for eloquence, and one of the few in which the female voice could be heard. Like drama, oratory too survives in written texts. These might be composed in advance, or written down during or after the speech, but they were often published, sometimes in anthologies (e.g. Vaumorière's Harangues sur toutes sortes de sujets, 1687), and as such became the object of study, appreciation, and imitation. The field was usually divided into four areas:
a. The eloquence of the pulpit. For many centuries this was the dominant kind of oratory: it is the only one which has left a significant mark in histories of literature [see Sermon].
b. Academic eloquence. All the academies, both Parisian and provincial, encouraged oratory. Jean-Jacques Rousseau came to fame with a discourse composed for the Dijon academy. The main kind of oratory practised in these assemblies was demonstrative, that of praise or blame [see Éloge].
c. Forensic eloquence. This existed wherever there were law courts, but attained a new prestige with the Ciceronian revival of the Renaissance. Much pleading in the 16th and 17th c. was remarkable for its rich literary erudition, its use of quotations and elaborate metaphors-this was criticized in Claude Fleury's Dialogues sur l'éloquence judiciaire (composed 1664) and mocked in Racine's Les Plaideurs. In the late 17th c. a simpler style came into fashion. Most speeches continued to be read from written texts until the 19th c., when legal oratory became less literary, more improvised. Few barristers have gained a place in literary history; they include Antoine Lemaître, Patru, and d' Aguesseau in the 17th c., and in the 18th Linguet, Henri Cochin (1687-1747), and two lawyers who defended Calas, Elie de Beaumont and Loyseau de Mauléon. Mirabeau fils and Beaumarchais also produced remarkable speeches when pleading their own cases.
d. Political eloquence. This came into its own during the Wars of Religion, when in university assemblies or at the États Généraux orators such as Pasquier, L'Hôpital, or Du Vair defended their causes. For most of the 17th and 18th c. there were no representative assemblies, and political oratory could only find a home in the law-courts (parlements). This was notably the case in the Parlement de Paris during the Fronde, and again at the time of the expulsion of the Jesuits (c.1761) and the Maupeou affair (1770). But generally, 18th-c. commentators looked with some envy to Britain as a place where political eloquence could flourish.
The Revolution rapidly changed all that. The National Assemblies, but also the clubs and public meetings, provided the forum for a great explosion of political eloquence, which now seemed capable of changing the fate of the nation. This eloquence has been much debated, usually in partisan terms. Some have seen it as the cradle both of modern political speaking and of a new kind of language prefiguring Romanticism; for others, it is sinister, grotesquely inflated, full of ‘noble Roman’ posturing. The speeches of the great orators, notably Mirabeau, Barnave, Danton, Vergniaud, Robespierre, Saint-Just, have mostly been published, even though we cannot be sure whether what we read is what was said. But to gain a truer impression of the reality of political debate, one needs to go back to the contemporary records printed in journals such as the Moniteur.
Napoleon's regime suppressed most political eloquence except his own, which was remarkable for its vigour, clarity, and concision. Thereafter, as parliamentary government established itself in France, political oratory became a normal part of the nation's life. Among politicians who acquired particular fame in the 19th and 20th c., one should mention Constant, Pierre-Antoine Berryer, Lamartine, Thiers, Guizot, and Jaurès. Charles de Gaulle above all, mastering the new possibilities of television and radio, used his quite traditional eloquence very effectively to sway public opinion and action; his speeches are as much a part of ‘literature’ as the great sermons of the 17th c.
[Peter France]
Bibliography
- J. Starobinski, “‘La Chaire, la tribune, le barreau’”, in P. Nora (ed.), Les Lieux de mémoire, II, La Nation, vol. 3 (1986)
