Une analyse de la scène du bal dans « La Princesse de Clèves » (1678) de Madame de La Fayette
An Analysis of the Ball Scene in Madame de La Fayette’s "La Princesse de Clèves" (1678)

Summary/Abstract: The ball scene in Madame de La Fayette's novel is one of the most remarkable scenes in the early psychological novels of French literature. Fundamentally ahistorical for the century in which the work was written, this ball scene depicts with surgical precision the intricate emotions of a sudden, devastating romantic passion between a man and a young married woman. While torment, vertigo, as well as introspection will be the feelings that inhabit Madame de Clèves, the intensity of this suddenness arises first through the senses—and particularly in this well-known scene, through the gaze, attributing to the court its panoptic character. Beauty, in its multifaceted aspects, will allow for the development of an aesthetic reflection attuned to the setting. The meeting between the two main characters will enable us to analyze sartorial aesthetics, while laying emphasis on corporeality, spatial confinement, and the feelings created within it, while the fatality linked to the ball scene will confront the causal explanation of rhetoric with the temporal continuum that the entire story must follow, and may even turn the work into a narrative of conversion.

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