By Barbara Cooper, professor of French

With the help of a Faculty Development Grant from CIE, I recently traveled to Paris, France to attend a conference on nineteenth-century French drama criticism.

The conference, sponsored by the Centre de recherche sur l’histoire du théâtre, with additional support from Centre de recherche sur la littérature du XIXe siècle, was held at the recently opened Maison de la Recherche at the Université de Paris-IV Sorbonne. The organizers believe that this was the first conference ever devoted exclusively to the subject of theater criticism in nineteenth-century France.

The conference brought together scholars from almost every corner of France as well as from Sweden, Belgium, Italy and the U.S. Paper topics covered questions of critical practices (how individual critics viewed their role and practiced their craft) and reception (how works by specific writers were treated by critics) as well as general topics (for example, the place and role of plot summaries in nineteenth-century critical literature; dramatic parody as a critical instrument; playwrights and/as critics).

The presentations provided a rich and unusually stimulating view of theater criticism from the beginning to the end of the century, a period during which drama continued to occupy a central place in French cultural life.

Because this conference focused on a specific topic (albeit from a variety of perspectives), unexpected connections among the papers were frequent and illuminating. And, as is true at any good conference, many new questions were raised by the presentations.

Indeed, as the conference organizers wrote afterwards, the quality and value of the work presented at the conference was such that a representative of the Presses de la Sorbonne in attendance has decided to inaugurate a new scholarly collection, "Histoire et pensée du théâtre," that will begin next fall with the publication of the papers from this conference.

I am truly grateful to have been able to attend and present my work at this meeting and thank the Center for International Education for the financial support that made my trip possible.