Genius as Commonplace in Early Modern France

The values associated with genius (originality, creativity, exemplarity) are now widely accepted. But, if the figure of genius has become a commonplace in our cultural imaginary, genius itself never expresses received ideas, and it is this radical distance from ordinary thinking that allows it to be recognized and distinguished. The construction of genius as commonplace is therefore based on tensions between innovation and convention, singularity and commonality, tensions that genius simultaneously generates and resolves. This paradoxical function makes it possible to reexamine the values associated with genius and to situate them in the contexts in which they first emerged.