“Ceci n’est pas une imagination ridicule”: circularidade de ideias entre escritores libertinos na França do século XVII (Cyrano de Bergerac, Chapelle, Charles Dassoucy e Tristan L’Hermite)

Abstract

Cyrano de Bergerac, Chapelle, Charles Dassoucy, and Tristan L’Hermite, by resorting to fiction, expressed reflections and challenges regarding independent ways of living and thinking within a context of imposed order. Their works analyzed here, Voyage à la Lune (1657) and Voyage au Soleil (1662), Voyage de Chapelle et de Bachaumont (1661), Les Avantures de Monsieur Dassoucy (1677) e Le Page Disgracié (1643), depict characters driven by writing, reading, travel, philosophical reflection and imagination, aspects that foster the emergence and expression of libertine ideas. This study, situated within the field of cultural history and the practices of written culture, investigates the circularity of ideas among these writers through their texts. The present study takes into account the representations within the works and the actions of the writers, which help reveal the nuances of the context and demystify the restrictive images associated with the period and its figures. This research demonstrates – through problematizations of the term libertine, the friendships between the writers, the professional practices in which they were engaged, the materiality of the sources, their readings, travel narratives, acts of imagination, the assertion of the self, and the central role of writing – how the exchange and circularity of ideas emerge as a defining characteristic of seventeenth-century French libertine authors, who used their writings as instruments for challenging prevailing dogmas and the structuring forces of their society.