| Summary: | Contrary to what some critical texts of the siècle de Lumières — which ignore pastoral drama — might lead us to think, Tasso’s work does not fall into disrepute at that time. On the contrary, it is obvious that it remains very popular among the French intellectual elite. In fact, it even goes through a revival at the end of the period. This is the paradox which the essay tries to explore. The paper deals mainly with the French translations of Tasso’s pastoral play, but it also studies the Italian editions of the work published in France. All these texts allow us to understand better some aspects of the « horizon of expectancy » of the French public in terms of pastoral works. Aminta, when it leaves the stage, becomes a model of new-found pastoral « simplicity » which contrasts with the gallant shepherds of the beginning of the century as well as with the complex world shown in Guarini’s Faithful Shepherd. Like Daphnis and Chloe, Aminta and Sylvia embody, in the translators’ eyes, an ideal of « naivety » and « sensibility » in keeping with those of Gessner’s shepherds. These texts also stage in an exemplary way the nostalgic quest for one’s origins, a theme which crops up in many aspects of the aesthetic thinking at the end of the century of the Enlightenment.
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