Turkish delight? The confecting of Turkish theatrical entertainment for
Turkish guests in eighteenth-century France
It has been argued that Montesquieu is perhaps one of the first
Enlightenment thinkers to posit an unbridgeable gap between Eastern and
Western societies - their manners, customs, and political life. This gap has been
understood as a function of the way in which the author of De l'esprit des lois and
the Lettres persanes draws on 'facts' gathered by travellers to the Ottoman Empire
(notably Rycaut and Chardin) to confirm his pre-established principles. Theories
and abstractions based on a priori logical analyses of ahistorical cirteria such as
climate, religion, and the character of people result in what is often condemned as
the Eurocentrism of such writing which in turn is seen to constitute an obstacle to
authentic intercultural communication.
The 1731 Amsterdam edition of the Lettres persanes (first published 1721) is
prefaced by the Lettres d'une Turque of Poullain de Saint-Foix (first published
1730). Notwithstanding the fact that, unlike Montesquieu, Saint-Foix had actually
travelled to Turkey, these fictional letters, which themselves also commanded
great popularity, are generally viewed as simply another manifestation of the
literary tradition inaugurated by the Lettres persanes and the widely translated
Espion turc of Marana, first published in Italian, 1684. However, Saint-Foix, a
fashionable author, also wrote widely for the popular theatre, his plays being
performed in private venues, and by the Italians at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and at
the théâtre de la foire of Saint-Germain. Of particular interest to the exploration of
Ottoman-European exchanges, I suggest, is his little known one-act comedy and
divertissement entitled Les Veuves turques, first performed on 19 August, 1747, by
non-professional actors in a private home, in the presence of Saül Effendi, the
Turkish ambassador to whom the play was subsequently dedicated. (It received
two further performances by the Commedia dell'arte.)
Work has been done on the place of exoticism in French theatre and upon
the role of the Turk, notably in French musical theatre. Focussing on Les Veuves
turques, this paper will look at one specific aspect of this topic: the ways in which
such pieces were written and staged to celebrate the presence of overseas visitors.
Saint-Foix's comedy will be considered in the context of similar diplomatic
occasions including, for example, the masked ball and musical entertainment
given by the Académie royale de musique, held on 21 June, 1721, at the Opéra in
honour of the Turkish ambassador and attended by 2,000 paying guests; or, in
September, 1721, the private performance of 'l'acte turc' from L'Europe galante for
the Turkish ambassador the evening before he departed from Lyon; or, indeed, the
performance in that same year of Rameau's Les Sauvages, reported to have been
inspired by the presence of an Amerindian at the Paris opera, and a staple of
musical exoticism frequently reset thereafter up to 1786 at least. Les Veuves
turques will also be located within the rich ongoing tradition of theatrical
exoticism, where the Turk is a recurrent figure within a imitative (and often, but
not always, parodic) series of comedies, vaudevilles, pantomines, ballets, puppet
shows and, occasionally, tragedies: Polichinelle grand Turc, 1695; La Vengeance de
Colombine ou Arlequin beau-frère du grand turc, 1703; Arlequin, Grand turc, 1715;
Arlequin grand-visir, 1713; Le bon turc, 1735; Arlequin pris escalve par les turcs,
1746; Le Turc généreux, 1751;...
The aim of the paper will be to explore the interaction between diplomatic
visits and the elaboration of cultural artefacts for the stage. I will suggest that even
while
French
theatre
of
the
Enlightenment
arguably
fictionalises
and
conventionalises Ottoman culture to an even greater degree than Montesquieu's
Lettres persanes, the very fact that these theatrical fictions were offered as
entertainment to honour foreign visitors brings them centrally and prominently
within the framework of intercultural exchange. By considering the process in
which the fictionalised 'other' is used as a gift, it is possible to reframe more
familiar eighteenth-century French orientalisms in terms of a more nuanced
understanding of the historical relationship between artistic representation and
cultural contact.
Jenny Mander,
University of Cambridge