ABSTRACT
French literary theory of the period adopted a severely neoclassical stance ultimately derived from Aristotle and Horace, in which each dramatic or literary genre had its distinctive place within a system of poetics. Most eighteenth-century French aestheticians before the 1770s subscribed to the Aristotelian theory of imitation. The nature of French instrumental music is to depict and to imitate, and it is quite appropriate that on occasion dance and music should come together to do this and make the imitation more pleasing and more perfect. Tragedy's objectives are terror and compassion; comedy's are instruction and moral improvement; but one cannot say precisely what are opera's, since up to now it has only been the entertainment of the idle spectator and music lover. An opera libretto is a dramatic poem which is characterized more by the supernatural than by truth and verisimilitude.
