The Paradox of Convention: «Critical reflections» by Jean-Baptiste Dubos

Piotr Olkusz

Abstract

In 1719, Jean-Baptiste Dubos published an extensive dissertation titled Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture, in which he proposed a new kind of reflection on art. Although he drew on ancient theories, he chiefly introduced a modern perspective of personal perception and individual enchantment to his work, foreshowing sensualism. In Polish theatre studies, l’Abbé Dubos is known almost exclusively through Zbigniew Raszewski’s article Partytura teatralna [Theatre Score]; consequently, his ideas are reduced mainly to deliberations on the possibility of creating a record of stage performance. In fact, however, the eighteenth-century theorist was fascinated by the idea of such a score inasmuch as he saw it as a tool for showing the actor the direction of exploring the part, not in order to achieve a utopian faithfulness of the author’s intention, but rather to analyse the actor’s own personal freedom and search for the truth of the play. The article discusses the main narrative strategies employed by Jean-Baptiste Dubos in the treatise and presents the main area of his theatrical interests and his idea of the function of the mask in ancient theatre and in commedia dell’arte. It also outlines the relationship between Dubos’s concepts and 18th-century theory and practice of Parisian theatre.