“Free to love?” The law of sin and romantic destiny in Segrais and Mme de Lafayette
Chamard-Bergeron, Julia
“Free to love?” The law of sin and romantic destiny in Segrais and Mme de Lafayette - 2018.
70
How is free will threatened by passionate love in French premodern novellas? In Segrais’s and Madame de Lafayette’s stories, in which protagonists cannot win in the face of desire, two distinct influences are intertwined: first, a persistence of commonplaces about destiny, typical of heroic novels, and second, an allusion to the will’s evil inclination as it is depicted in St. Augustine’s writings. After having recalled a few ideas of this theologian about free will and grace, my paper describes the way in which the two aforementioned neoclassical writers deal with the problem of irresistible love. In some of the Nouvelles françaises, there are so many explanations—in line with clichés about novels—of why one cannot escape love’s power, that it is simply best to go with the flow. In La Princesse de Clèves, however, the birth of passion provokes amazement due to the enslavement of free will, thus giving way to moral meditations that are close to Augustinian teachings.
“Free to love?” The law of sin and romantic destiny in Segrais and Mme de Lafayette - 2018.
70
How is free will threatened by passionate love in French premodern novellas? In Segrais’s and Madame de Lafayette’s stories, in which protagonists cannot win in the face of desire, two distinct influences are intertwined: first, a persistence of commonplaces about destiny, typical of heroic novels, and second, an allusion to the will’s evil inclination as it is depicted in St. Augustine’s writings. After having recalled a few ideas of this theologian about free will and grace, my paper describes the way in which the two aforementioned neoclassical writers deal with the problem of irresistible love. In some of the Nouvelles françaises, there are so many explanations—in line with clichés about novels—of why one cannot escape love’s power, that it is simply best to go with the flow. In La Princesse de Clèves, however, the birth of passion provokes amazement due to the enslavement of free will, thus giving way to moral meditations that are close to Augustinian teachings.
Réseaux sociaux