La «gaieté française» ou la question du caractère national dans la définition du rire, de L'Esprit des lois à De la littérature

"French gaiety" or the question of national character in the definition of laughter, from L'esprit des lois to De la littérature. The myth of 18th-century French gaiety or frivolity continues to inhabit the collective consciousness and feed literary nostalgia. But one can ask what Voltaire's contemporaries thought and how French character was represented in that period of the Europeanisation of culture. The question of "national character" (which obviously poses scientific problems) became an important issue in reflection on laughter in the second half of the century. On the one hand, the question was how to defend (ou condemn) national identity by means of a comic norm ; awareness of a type of specifically French (as opposed to English, German, Italian or Spanish) laughter involves important political elements and allows us to mesure resistance or openness to foreign identities. On the other hand, the Enlightenment obviously developed the study of laughter by relating it more and more sytematically to a specific cultural environment.Huchette Jocelyn. La «gaieté française» ou la question du caractère national dans la définition du rire, de L'Esprit des lois à De la littérature. In: Dix-huitième Siècle, n°32, 2000. Le rire, sous la direction de Lise Andries . pp. 97-109