French Literature Reviews - 2026

T.B. Cuillé, Narrative Interludes: Musical Tableaux in Eighteenth-Century French Texts
Comparative and World Literature

CUILLÉ, Tili Boon, Narrative Interludes: Musical Tableaux in Eighteenth-Century French Texts, University of Toronto Press, 2006, 320 p.

ISBN : 0802038425

French authors in the eighteenth century traditionally used music to enhance literary love scenes. Jean-Jacques Rousseau considerably expanded contemporary notions of music's expressive power, yet distinguished between the capacity of different nations and sexes to wield it. Rousseau's controversial statements led his readers to interrogate the relationship between music, meaning, and morality. They depicted their resistance to his claims in musical tableaux, or musical performances staged for a beholder inscribed within the text. Tili Boon Cuillé's Narrative Interludes chronicles the emergence of the musical tableau in French literature.

Spanning the latter half of the eighteenth century, Cuillé brings the cultural discourse on music and musicians to bear on the works of Diderot, Cazotte, Beaumarchais, Charrière, Cottin, Krüdener, and Staël. She turns attention from the representation of music to its moral repercussions, from aesthetic innovation to social resistance, and from national to gender politics. Juxtaposing pre-eminent and popular writers, Cuillé reads their fictional works in light of their treatises on art and society, exploring the significance of musical tableaux that have previously fallen outside the scope of literary analysis but that revolutionized the form and function of music in the text.

Tili Boon Cuillé is an assistant professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis.

During the Enlightenment, the intersections of musical aesthetics, moral philosophy, and political discourse engaged numerous writers across Europe. Debates concerning the expressive capacities of art frequently reflected broader inquiries into national identity, emotional regulation, and gendered roles in society. Authors often interrogated these theoretical questions through fictional narratives, integrating performances and artistic spectacles into their prose. This dynamic tradition placed music at the center of discussions regarding literary form, cultural representation, and the moral education of the reader, bridging aesthetic theory with narrative practice in the period's literature.

Readers interested in eighteenth-century French literature, music aesthetics, and interdisciplinary approaches to narrative may find it relevant. Narrative Interludes: Musical Tableaux in Eighteenth-Century French Texts chronicles the emergence of the musical tableau across the latter half of the eighteenth century. The book examines works by Diderot, Cazotte, Beaumarchais, Charrière, Cottin, Krüdener, and Staël in light of contemporary treatises on art and society, exploring the moral repercussions, social resistance, and politics associated with these embedded musical performances.