National Values and Theatrical Values. The Battle of the Siege de Calais (1765)

This article underscores the complex relationship between national concerns and dramatic criticism by interrogating the role of theatre in the creation of a 'national culture' during the last few decades of the Ancien regime. The author focuses more specifically on the forms of patriotism proposed by Pierre-Laurent De Belloy, author of Le Siege de Calais, France's "first tragedy in which the nation is given the pleasure to take an interest in itself," as well as by his adversaries and his allies. The version of patriotism proffered by De Belloy - a 'fatherland' that he defines as both bourgeois and monarchical - renders problematic several aesthetic and political norms in place in 1765. The author thus responds modestly to one of the most essential questions posed by research on eighteenth-century political and cultural history: how did patriotism operate before the French Revolution?

A poetics of Marcel Proust's vocation

The view is upheld that it is possible to constitute a conception of artistic vocation from fiction itself with characteristics that may be extended to other vocational fields. "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" by Marcel Proust is made use of to exemplify how this author reflects critically on his own work and on the artist's conditions. Thus he points out the importance of randomness, childhood, Materializing into a work an adequate conception of his own artistic work, involuntary memory, the life that has been lived, and his own comprehension of art, the force of conviction, Vocation is a call that overcomes the dichotomy between innate gift and social product as it is the result of a genesis of sensory impressions and involuntary memories that, although they are fugacious, they become fixed in the literary work. It is explained how "A la Recherche " both can and cannot be considered the history of a vocation, as literature had not played any role at all in the novelistic hero's life, but, however, it really was a history of a vocation since the work was a consequence of events that had been lived. Notwithstanding, even if vocation had never been deemed so important, he must win a battle against death. Genette sums up "A la Recherche " thus: "Marcel becomes a writer".