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So many things (many of them excellent) have already been written about Baroque — both in terms of fine art, and of literature — that producing a book on such a subject compells any author to be infinitely scrupulous.There is no scarcity of « recognized Baroque experts » with impressive qualifications, in France or abroad. Even if the baroque room were perhaps too « crowded » to admit even one more dressing table or chest of drawers, one could always call upon a decorator to tastefully arrange this extravagant set of furniture. The time has come, now, to sort through the plethora of ideas by taking stock of the last fifty years of critical writings on the baroque and attempt to lay down criteria by which to recognize historical baroque (the style prevailing around the turn of the 16th century), by examining the current revival of baroque in our contemporary culture and, lastly, by identifying certain criteria for assessing baroque in an era characterized by increasing trivialization.Henriette Levillain is a professor at Université de Paris-Sorbonne. An author of several studies devoted to Saint-John Perse, Mme de La Fayette and Marguerite Yourcenar, she has also directed several collective works on such subjects as Dante, Guadeloupe and saintliness.
