The 1720’s and its subjective repercussion: the dematerialization of values and the mimesis of the aggravated everyday life

Abstract

In the same period in which occurs the failure of the economic plan created by the Scotsman John Law, the Law’s System, that was the first speculative model of modern eastern culture, the novels by Marivaux and Prévost are published in France. They bring a « new realism ». The concept of realism in E. Auerbach helps us to analyze the aesthetic transformations in the fictional prose of that time. The goal is to address the aggravation of the representation of the human risk in the here and now, equalizing and making the characters and their actions « common » which do not structure themselves anymore from a teleological or biblical interpretation.The theatre by Marivaux and the dramatic theory by Diderot, with the concepts of « condition » and « tableau », help us to examine this moment of aesthetic change in the fictional narrative.