‖ belles-lettres, n. pl.
(ˌbɛl ˈlɛtr)
Also 8 -letters, belle-lettre.
[Fr.; lit. ‘fine letters, i.e. literary studies,’ parallel to beaux arts the ‘fine arts’; embracing, according to Littré, grammar, rhetoric, and poetry.]
Elegant or polite literature or literary studies. A vaguely-used term, formerly taken sometimes in the wide sense of ‘the humanities,’ literæ humaniores; sometimes in the exact sense in which we now use ‘literature’; in the latter use it has come down to the present time, but it is now generally applied (when used at all) to the lighter branches of literature or the æsthetics of literary study.
| 1710 Swift Tatler No. 230 ¶2 The Traders in History and Politicks, and the Belles Lettres. 1747 Scheme Equip. Men of War 23 Civil or Military Law, or any other Part of the Belles Letters. 1801 Finlayson H. Blair, To endow a Professorship of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the University of Edinburgh. 1848 L. Hunt Town iii. 138 A strong union has always existed between the law and the belles-lettres. 1855 H. Reed Lect. Eng. Lit. i. (1878) 34 That vapid, half naturalized term ‘belles-lettres,’ which has had some currency as a substitute for the term ‘literature.’ |