Abstract

The purpose of this article is to talk about the issues related to music in Abbé Dubos’ work, Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting, specifically on the imitative theories in eighteenth – century French opera. For this, through the translations of paragraphs 45 and 47 of the first part of his work, we made an overview of the historical panorama of this work in front of the French Enlightenment and its correspondence with the literary aspect, important element so that the music possessed some meaning, and their relations with the concept of nature, reason and feeling. The imitative theories had fundamental importance in the artistic making up to century XVIII, being left of side when the aspect of the feeling entered as an important data for the notion of taste in music.