Génie du christianisme Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Carlos Lynes Jr.

Critical Essay by Carlos Lynes Jr.

Lynes Jr., Carlos. “Chateaubriand, Revitalizer of the French Classics.” Romantic Review 31, no. 4 (December 1940): 355-63.

In the following essay, Lynes Jr. analyzes Chateaubriand's contributions as a literary critic and proponent of classicism, focusing on The Genius of Christianity.

The Génie du Christianisme, even supplemented by Chateaubriand's other writings, does not present a systematic and complete tableau of French literature in the seventeenth century. Nevertheless in his occasional rôle as a critic Chateaubriand gives us interesting and suggestive judgments on nearly all the seventeenth-century writers whom he finds time to mention. In these comments the critic is generally looking at literature from a certain angle and borrowing illustrations to prove a thesis, or else expressing personal preferences with little regard for theories and dogmas. A constant preoccupation is the desire to annihilate the whole eighteenth century of the philosophes and to link the “littérature nouvelle,” of which he considers...
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