GABRIEL FEDERICCI DA COSTA

Our research is part of an aesthetic debate on the French bourgeois tragedy of the 18th century and the transposition of the serious genre, positioned between the extreme genres of tragedy and comedy, into the theatre of the Enlightenment. This genre would later be designated in the 19th century as the bourgeois drama. Starting from Denis Diderot's theorisation of the 'dramatic system', we will follow the trajectory of the elements constituting the bourgeois tragedy as they are influenced by the processes and models of classical tragedy. These elements are highlighted by the social positions of the characters, their family conflicts, and the relationship between the passions expressed on the 17th-century stage and the new conception of emotion in the 18th century. Consequently, the aim is to verify, through the drama, how this genre positions itself and which elements it directly inherits from classical tragedy. By analysing the application of the unities of place, action, and time, and the adherence to or deviation from the rules of decorum and verisimilitude, under this new guise, we identify the tragic model that persists at the heart of the bourgeois drama.