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Thesis--Bonn. / Appendices (p. 161-201) : 1. Cours d'Architecture, p. 703-726, by F. Blondel.--2. Ordonnance des cinq especes de colonnes selon la methode des a nciens, p. 96-112, by C. Perrault. Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-127).

This study examines the debates which marked the entry of culture as a theoretical issue in French writing at the end of the 17th century. The premise is that while culture could be said to have always been present in the very earliest treatises as the context, goal, and medium of architectural speculation, the focus on culture for considering the grounds, principles, and aims of architectural work portends a modern struggle to define a secular basis for human work. / The study begins with Claude Perrault's controversial declaration of arbitrary and positive beauty in the 17th century. Key to this research is the concept of arbitraire which attended his thinking on custom. Following Perrault's own cue, and complementing earlier studies of his scientific background, the study examines evidence of these concepts in contemporaneous discussions of jurisprudence and language. These contexts indicate that Perrault spoke from within an already prevalent discourse---one which affected the terms of architectural thought even amongst Perrault's critics in the 17th and 18th centuries. / Remaining with the question of the critical terrain opened up therein for architectural work, the study continues with an examination of the idea of caractere-convenant articulated by Germain Boffrand and Jacques-Francois Blondel, respectively. As with Perrault topical discourses of the time an examined to situate them terms, including those on luxury, taste, and civilite. As elaborations of a theory of architectural expression, the thinking on architectural character by these two authors can be considered heir to Perrault's legacy in more than one respect. The discourse of caractere itself, beginning with these first treatments, was an effort to articulate a role for human artifice, convention, and tradition within the search for enduring principles. More specifically, in seeking to ground architectural expression upon a language community---albeit a tenuous and finite one---Boffrand and Blondel developed a theory of signification which was a unique development of, and a demonstration for Perrault's analogy of arbitrary beauty and civil law. The uniqueness of this moment is framed by later developments in the thinking of grounds and fundaments, of invention and convention, and of architectural character at the end of the 18th century.