La Bruyère: the Moralist in Space

Abstract Roland Barthes describes Les Caractères as a 'remarquable collection de substances, de lieux, d'usages, d'attitudes'. The article comments upon the links La Bruyère establishes between places, 'usages', and 'attitudes', and how this contributes to his moraliste project. La Bruyère's characters seek to manage their spaces, both outdoors and in. He links his portrayal of character-types to specific external locations: districts of Paris, churches, places of public resort such as the Tuileries. Contemporary descriptions of Paris are drawn on to illuminate these connections. He shows his characters confined to one district, or moving about the city in endless displacements, out of routine or to gratify their passions. In his presentation of internal spaces, La Bruyère frequently focuses on their capacity to express relations of power, usually through exclusion. Private inaccessible space is associated with dubious or corrupt passions, whereas the philosopher, willing to do good to his fellow-creatures, keeps his door open. The final spatial dimension explored is the astronomical: La Bruyère's religious apologetic evokes the immense distances of outer space. Through the Caractères, he seeks to highlight and discredit the image of space that serves as the background to our daily lives, a space punctuated with objects of an illusory and self-centred desire, around which we propel ourselves in obedience to our passions, in a state of estrangement from God.