L’amateur à l’époque des Lumières

Obéissant à la logique d’une spécialisation toujours plus grande, les sociétés contemporaines ne tiennent pas l’amateur en grande estime. Or, s’il est vrai que le 18e siècle consacre le triomphe de cette figure, c’est aussi l’époque où s’amorce son irréversible déclin. Couvrant un large spectre de disciplines et d’aires culturelles au sein de l’Europe, les contributions de spécialistes réunies dans ce volume permettent de mieux cerner ce moment-pivot de l’histoire culturelle.

Sans se limiter aux formes institutionnalisées de l’amateurship étudiées par les historiens de l’art ou des sciences, l’ouvrage examine ainsi les relations que le non-professionnel entretient avec les gens de métier (dans la presse, le milieu musical ou littéraire) ; la spécificité des œuvres qu’il produit et sa contribution au progrès des arts et des sciences ; l’émergence, à l’âge de l’esthétique naissante, d’un amateur compris comme instance de jugement ; la manière dont il est investi par les discours et annexé à leurs logiques propres (en tant que fiction littéraire, idéal ou ethos). Observer le phénomène dans ses manifestations plurielles, confronter l’ordre des réalités et celui des représentations, articuler les diverses approches sur la question: l’enjeu, on l’aura compris, est moins de définir une quelconque identité de l’amateur, que d’interroger sa raison d’être.

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Amateurs are not particularly appreciated in our ever specialising contemporary societies. Yet the figure of the amateur was highly celebrated in the eighteenth century, even though its irremediable decline began at the same time. The articles collected in this book allow a better understanding of this turning point in cultural history as they cover a wide spectrum of academic disciplines and European cultural areas.

This book does not only deal with the institutionalised forms of amateurship that have been studied by art historians and historians of science. This work considers the relationships that non-professionals had with professionals (working in periodicals, in the musical world, or in the book trade) ; the specificity of the works that amateurs produced and their contribution to the progress of arts and sciences ; the rise of the amateur as a judging instance in a period that saw the development of aesthetics ; and the way this figure was handled in different discourses and subjected to their own logics (whether as a literary fiction, an ideal or an ethos). Since this collective work focuses on the phenomenon of amateurship in its diverse manifestations, confronts the real to its representations, and articulates different perspectives on the subject, it obviously does not aim at defining any identity for the amateur, but rather intends to question its raison d'être.

Contributor: Justine de Reyniès (Edited by), Bénédicte Peralez Peslier (Edited by)

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