From the old regime to the new economy: French literature and economy in the eighteenth century (French text)

Economic events (e.g. John Law's Systeme, grain price liberalization) and economic thought (e.g. the Physiocrats, Turgot) were of major importance during the French Enlightenment. This dissertation examines how a certain number of French thinkers, all of whom produced literary works, shaped and reacted to this rise of the economy and of economics. From a methodological standpoint, the approach is two-sided. I analyze my literary corpus in light of its historical context, most specifically the history of economic events and ideas. I also practice an economic anthropology applied not to exotic societies but to 18th century texts. This means analyzing my corpus to see how production and consumption, monetary exchange and gift exchange, commerce and agriculture, and other economic concepts function in them.; The first part deals with three thinkers who wrote both fictional and theoretical works: Montesquieu, Rousseau and Diderot. I show how Montesquieu insists on balances: he defends the idea of a doux commerce, while preserving a role for the nobility as a balance to merchantry; he denounces Law's Systeme for its ignorance of all balancing influences. Rousseau in his novel and his theoretical works resists the development of monetary exchange and commerce, through the foregrounding of autarcic agricultural communities. Diderot's position is more ambiguous: in the theoretical works analyzed, he presents a well-ordered economic world based on private property and economic rationality; in the novels analyzed, the economic world is disordered and hardly utopical.; The second part deals with three different literary genres: the novel, theater and poetry. The two novels, by Prevost and Graffigny, both turn their backs on expansive, money-driven economies. On the other hand, the playwrights, Sedaine, Beaumarchais, and Mercier, defend the growing importance of trade through the portrayal of their merchant heroes. The two poets, Saint-Lambert and Roucher, though in the Enlightenment mainstream, propose a view of agricultural life quite removed from that of the Physiocrats.