French Literature Reviews - 2026

What is the Baroque?
Other Literary Studies

Henriette Levillain, Qu'est-ce que le baroque?
Published by Éditions Klincksieck in December 2003, in the "Études" series.

So much, and so much of it excellent, has already been written about the Baroque—in both the fine arts and literature—that one embarks on writing a book on the subject only with the utmost hesitation.
The "master guides to the Baroque" are numerous and formidable, both in France and abroad. Even though the Baroque salon was perhaps already too crowded to accommodate yet another dressing table or chest of drawers, there was a clear need for a decorator to bring order to this vast collection. It has become necessary today to assess the current state of scholarly reflection by reviewing the past fifty years of critical output on the historical Baroque (that of the turn of the 17th century), by examining the resurgence of the Baroque in contemporary culture, and finally by establishing distinct evaluative criteria in the face of a growing tendency toward trivialization.
Henriette Levillain is a professor at Paris-Sorbonne University. She has authored studies dedicated to Saint-John Perse, Madame de La Fayette, and Marguerite Yourcenar, and has edited several collective volumes on Dante, Guadeloupe, and sanctity.

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The Baroque remains a complex and widely debated category in art history and literary studies, often defined by its emphasis on movement, ornamentation, and the tension between illusion and reality. Emerging in the late 16th century, the movement has long occupied a central place in European intellectual history. Henriette Levillain's Qu'est-ce que le baroque?, published in 2003, notes the abundance of existing scholarship on the subject and identifies a need to organize this vast collection of critical perspectives across both the fine arts and literature.

The book reviews the past fifty years of critical output on the historical Baroque of the early 17th century and examines the resurgence of the Baroque in contemporary culture. It also addresses the tendency toward the trivialization of the term by establishing distinct evaluative criteria. Readers interested in the history of critical theory and the development of stylistic movements in the humanities may find this examination of the field relevant to their research.