Conférence - Jean Baudoin - le Moraliste et l’Expression Emblématique

The Lettres & SHS University Library invites you to a lecture by teacher-researcher Marie Chaufou.

Jean Baudoin, a prolific writer and translator, was one of the first members of the Académie française. However, his work goes beyond the mere transmission of knowledge - he played a key role in disseminating a political and symbolic culture in the service of the monarchy. By translating the major texts of his time, he helped make French a language of prestige, at the heart of the royal project of Louis XIII and Richelieu.

But Baudoin was not content with words alone. He also understood early on the power of images and symbols, notably through emblems and allegory. His translation and adaptation of Cesare Ripa's Iconologia show how he used these figurative representations to reinforce royal authority and give a new dimension to political communication.

In this lecture, we'll see how Baudoin, through his work of translating and interpreting images, contributed to the construction of a symbolic language specific to 17th-century France. His work, at the crossroads of literature and politics, deserves to be rediscovered today.

Marie Chaufour holds a doctorate in modern art history and is a lecturer at the Université Bourgogne Europe. Her research focuses on text-image relations in the 16th and 17th centuries, with a particular emphasis on emblematic art. She has just co-edited l'Image pensive Devises et emblèmes du XVIe au XXIe siècle, proceedings of the XIth Congress of the Society for Emblem Studies (L'Harmattan, 2023). She is now devoting her research to emblems applied to decor in France.

Conference organized in the exhibition room of the BU Lettres & SHS.
Accessible to people with reduced mobility.

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