I've been looking at the Molière. "You probably don't want to ask me what I think of your poem, because I tell the truth." "Be sincere with me, tell me what you really think of my poem." "Are you sure?" "Yes..." [recites poem] "What do you think?" "Not very good." "You are a jerk."
It's interesting that social and political judgements are linked to aesthetic ones. A particular kind of aristocrat writes a particular kind of bad poem. Bad taste is based on enforcement of social falsity. It is an obligatory kind of bad taste: you cannot refuse to offer an opinion; the opinion is compelled. Molière must write a parody of the kind of bad sonnet he has in mind. His audience, then, shares in the judgment of Alceste's misanthropy. Molière's own taste, then, becomes normative. We are too far away from 17th century France to understand exactly what is going on.
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