bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Le voyage en Italie de Fougeroux de Bondaroy
Authors: Perez Marie-Félicie , Pinault Madeleine
Published: June 2016

Marie Félicie Pérez and Madeleine Pinault : Fougeroux de Bondaroy's

Italian journey.

In 1763, A.-D. Fougeroux de Bondaroy, nephew of Duhamel du Monceau and member of the Académie des Sciences, travelled to Italy. He wrote a Journal of his trip in 5 volumes, 4 of which are extant. The first concerns the journey from Paris to Genoa (Lyons, Municipal Library) ; one volume is about Rome, one other about Naples (Philadelphia, The American Philosophical Society Library) ; and the last recounts the return journey from Lyons to Orleans (Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania Library). The lost volume, covering the journey from Genoa to Rome, can be reconstituted from various documents. The Journal shows the author's skill at drawing and reveals his varied interests in sciences, antiquity and ethnography.
Dampier, ou la relation des îles aux tortues
Authors: Blanc Gérard
Published: June 2016

Gérard Blanc : Dampier or the account of tortoise island.

When he visited the Galapagos Islands in April 1684, Dampier gave an impersonal account, typical of travellers of his time. The experience of reality was transformed by the way it was read. In his Grand dictionnaire géographique, La Martinière replaced the long description of the tortoises by frequently picturesque accounts taken from various other travellers. In his Histoire des voyages, Prévost also presents the text ; he manages to harmonize the geographical information and the account of personal experience, but he ignores the treatise on the tortoises. We try to throw light on this dark zone which the compilers have skirted around.
Politique et littérature : la correspondance de Dmitri A. Golitsyn (1760-1784)
Authors: Dulac Georges , Evdokimova Ludmilla
Published: June 2016

Catherinne Cusset : Sade, Machiavelli and Nero — from political theory

to the libertine imagination.

This article studies, by means of a precise analysis of references to Machiavelli and Nero to be found in Sade's Histoire de Juliette, the relationship of Sadian libertinage to political theory and to history. Quotations from Machiavelli, and references to certain episodes in Nero's life, allow Sade to base his fiction in reality by giving it political and historical credentials. The way Sade deforms Machiavelli's writings and his sources for Nero's life (Suetonius and Tacitus) show the real use he is making of these figures, namely making fiction triumph over reality.
Un recueil inconnu de manuscrits clandestins
Authors: Lough John
Published: June 2016

John Lough : An unknown collection of clandestine manuscripts.

This manuscript of over 600 pages in a museum in a small English town contains a curious collection of 31 items in French, long and short, published and unpublished. They range in date from a poem by Jean Dehénault (1670) to Voltaire's A Henri IV (1766). Besides his Epître à Uranie, La Religion naturelle and the Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne , there are several poems by Chaulieu. Among other published works there are Voltaire pamphlets and Diderot's Pen¬ sées philosophiques. The manuscript also included the complete text of some well-known clandestine treatises — La Religion chrétienne analysée, the Traité des trois imposteurs and the Extrait des pensées et sentimens de Mr Jean Meslier — and short extracts from the Examen de la Religion. A brief introduction precedes a list, with comments, of the 31 items.
La méthode de Spallanzani à travers sa correspondance
Authors: di Pietro Pericle
Published: June 2016

Pericle di Pietro : Spallanzani's method as seen in his correspondence.

A fundamental characteristic of Lazzaro Spallanzani's scientific activity was his use of a precise method which he followed and constantly applied right from the beginning of his research. This consisted in the close and repeated observation of natural phenomena, followed by the experimental reproduction of the same phenomena ; the experiments were repeated several times, modifying their form in different ways. This methodology can be discovered, frequently expressed in the author's own words, from numerous references in his correspondence. It was applied not only to biological studies but also to all the forms of natural history research to which he devoted himself.
Magnétisme animal. La sensation infinie
Authors: Azouvi François
Published: June 2016

François Azouvi : Animal magnetism. Infinite sensation.

This article attempts to show that in the works of Mesmer and the Mesme-rians there is, despite their real intentions, a tendency to move from a position in which the role of the magnetizer is initially minimized and reduced to that of a mere agent transmitting the fluid, to one in which the magnetizer becomes vitally important, as he activizes the therapeutic agent. The same development can be seen when the subject is looked at from the practical as opposed to the theoretic angle, in which case, thanks to its treatment of the theme of sensation, animal magnetism can be seen to be developing towards a major recognition of the role of the subject.
Condillac et Mably : Dix lettres inédites ou retrouvées
Authors: Moureau François
Published: June 2016

Condillac and Mably : ten unpublished or rediscovered letters, presented by François Moure au.

This article concerns seven letters by Condillac which had been lost since the end of the 19th Century at least, two other unpublished ones, and an unpublished letter by Mably. They provide a more exact reading of known documents and lead to reflections on the fate of the La Condamine-Maupertuis archives, which are the equivalent of the Berlin Formey archives for relations between Prussia and France during the Enlightenment. Investigations, as yet unfinished, in the Jagelon Library in Cracow, the Berlin State Library, the Archives of the Paris Science Academy, or in recent Paris auctions, provide provisional conclusions concerning these broken up collections.
Quatre lettres inédites d'Ange Goudar au marquis de Sade
Authors: Lever Maurice
Published: June 2016

Ange Goudar : Four unpublished letters to the Marquis de Sade, presented by Maurice Lever.

Sade met Pierre-Ange Goudar, writer and adventurer, in 1775 during his flight to Italy after the "little girls" affair. An exchange of letters followed ; four of them, from the Sade family archives, are published here. Goudar expresses his opinions of Rome, Naples and Florence, his reflections on Cardinal Bernis and the Count of Saint-Germain, and speaks about his wife Sarah and his own writings. These unpublished pages reveal a hitherto totally unknown literary friendship between the author of Justine and another libertine called Goudar.
Réaumur «métallurgiste»
Authors: Eluerd Roland
Published: June 2016

Roland Eluerd : Réaumur as a metallurgist.

A study of Reaumur's metallurgical works, eminently worthwhile, shows that on the rare occasions on which they were published, they were revised by the publishers in such a way as to alter their meaning, because his correct intuitions concerning the nature of steel contradicted accepted theories. In addi¬ tion, they were written in a way which tried to combine an attention to the workmen's particular vocabulary, the need for a scientific use of language and a desire to be accessible to as many readers as possible. Thirty years before the Encyclopédie, Réaumur's work on metallurgy already revealed all the tensions created by these generous but contradicctory aims.
La Basiliade : une utopie orientale ?
Authors: Labib Abdelaziz
Published: June 2016

Abdelaziz Labib : Morelly's Basiliade. an oriental utopia ?

Morelly, in his Basiliade, claims to be merely the translator of a true Hindu "poem", Kalileh ye Demnah, which he attributes to Bidpai. Although not very unusual, this calls for two remarks. 1) Concerning the form, he borrows from the literary incarnations of the oriental tale, recounted by d'Herbelot in the Bibliothèque orientale (1679). The Fable of Bidpai was often recomposed for political authorities, by translators, compilers or forgers and adapted to the local cultural atmosphere. Curiously, Morelly's Prologue gives the same information as d'Herbelot. 2) As to the content, Morelly was certainly inspired by the Bibliothèque orientale' s commentaries on oriental myths and Koranic sourats. His borrowings concern both the vocabulary and, more importantly, the parables which enliven his pantheism and present it in a vivid and enchanted way.
Condorcet, «le seul» et «le premier» féministe du 18e siècle ?
Authors: Pappas John
Published: June 2016

John Pappas : Is Condorcet the "first-and "only" Feminist in the 18th century ?

The biography of Condorcet by Elisabeth and Robert Badinter presents him as the "first" and "only" defender of women in his century. This article points out that fourteen years before Condorcet's work on the subject, D'Alembert had written a similar essay "On women", quoted here at length, and what is more, sought to have not one but four women elected to the French Academy. Since Condorcet was his faithful disciple, we can assume that D'Alembert's example influenced his own position on women. We must not follow mediaeval chroniclers who invented pious myths to enhance the status of their saints. It is to Condorcet's credit that he defended women, but he is not a Prometheus stealing fire from heaven for the good of mankind. He is a man of his century who simply followed his predecessors in spreading enlightenment ideas.
Matière inerte et matière vivante. La théorie de la perception chez Maupertuis
Authors: Ibrahim Annie
Published: June 2016

Inert and living matter. Maupertuis'S theory of Perception.

Starting from an "open", inquiry into the idea of matter, Maupertuis proposes a theory of the generation and reproduction of living bodies on the model of perception. Maupertuis borrows Leibniz's theory of monadic perception and like him accords perception and appetite to animals and plants. Hence, Maupertuis claims that the smallest living particles possess elementary perception. He can thus show that a sort of memory of its former state leads the particle to the place where it can play its appropriate role in the make-up of the future organism, and he can establish the relation between the elementary particles and the whole organism. The role of contingency allows him to explain both the way the particles join together according to their chosen affinities and also the failures of this teleology, such as monsters or albinos.
La nature et le premier principe de la métaphysique chez d'Holbach et Diderot
Authors: Mensching Günther
Published: June 2016

Nature and the first principle of metaphysics in d'Holbach and Diderot.

This article studies the systematic relationship of d'Holbach and Diderot to traditional metaphysics by comparing their respective approaches. Although they vigorously criticize metaphysical systems, their main adversary is not Aristotelianism but Cartesianism. We thus consider in some detail the problems connected with this tradition, which each materialist solved in his own way. The main thesis of this article is that it is precisely this rigorous refutation of Cartesian dualism which pushes d'Holbach back into the defects of traditional metaphysics, while Diderot is beginning to develop a type of reflection which is better able to avoid the pitfalls of first philosophy.
Condillac, inventeur d'un nouveau matérialisme
Authors: Auroux Sylvain
Published: June 2016

Condillac as the inventor of a new materialism.

The originality of Condillac's materialism does not lie in his ontology but in his theory of knowledge. The development of modern cognitivism enables us to judge more favourably its radically new elements, namely the rejection of faculties in favour of self-organisation and the explanation of intellectual performance by stacking up acquired systems of information processing. The role of language as action (affirming consists in pronouncing a statement) allows us to understand how the most abstract cognitive activity depends on the human being's corporeal participation in the world.
La fortune d'Émile et l'apprentissage de la lecture
Authors: Py Gilbert
Published: June 2016

The fortunes of Emile and the teaching of reading.

The teaching of reading gradually developed in French in the second half of the 18th Century. The twofold influence of Locke (and Condillac who developed empiricism into a system) and Rousseau contributed to a renewal of methods. The aim was to appeal to the child's senses, for which much equipment was used. But alongside alphabets and syllabaries which decomposed sounds and letters, we find in Europe the beginnings of global methods which, following Émile, take into account the child's personality and emphasize the meaning of the word and the phrase.
Montesquieu et l'Inquisition
Authors: Erhard Jean
Published: June 2016

Montesquieu and the Inquisition.

When one lists all the scattered references to the Inquisition in Montesquieu's works, one is led to the conclusion that he manifested for this institution both a solid curiosity and a constant hostility, culminating in the passionately eloquent Très humble remontrance in the Esprit des Lois. The originality of this condemnation, which is as solidly argued as it is vehement, mainly lies in its context. For Montesquieu's stand is not only that of an enlightened Christian and a humanist, it is also part of a general conception of the secularisation of the state, by the clear separation of the spiritual and the temporal. This daring principle, which denies any legitimacy to the institution, contrasts with Montesquieu's prudence in the criticism of its procedures, as if here the magistrate, familiar with a legal system which likewise emphasized the search for confession, has overcome the philosophe.
Le Monde primitif d'Antoine Court de Gébelin, ou le rêve d'une encyclopédie solitaire
Authors: Mercier-Faivre Anne-Marie
Published: June 2016

Antoine Court de Gébelins Le monde primitif.

In 1772, the date of the publication of the final volumes of the Encyclopédie, Court de Gébelin, a well-known Protestant and Freemason, launched a subscription for Le Monde primitif analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne, a work which should have run to thirty or so volumes. The discovery which he was presenting to the public, that of the primitive language, of which he promised a dictionary, was to provide the explanation for everything that was still mysterious and give the Encyclopédie the roots it was lacking. This article studies Court de Gébelin's undertaking, compares and contrasts it with that of the Encyclopaedists, and shows the extent to which it was wildly amibitious, opened up seductive paths and proposed a dangerous vision of the world and history.
Le théâtre de Mme de Genlis. Une morale chrétienne sécuralisée
Authors: Plagnol Marie-Emmanuelle
Published: June 2016

Madame de Genlis'S theatre : A secularised Christian morality.

The varied plays in Madame de Genlis's Théâtre d'éducation à l'usage des jeunes personnes and the Théâtre de société (1779 to 1785), have an apparently not very original unifying moral plan. They criticize pride, vanity, laziness, idle talk, calumny, and praise charity, courage and temperance. But its historical context dates this transformed Christian morality ; it is socially justified, as it preserves the harmony between man and the external world from which the individual cannot isolate himself. Once she has established the secularisation of morality and the laws of balance, Mme de Genlis can draw a series of portraits according to the theatre of conditions. Her moral vision, founded on harmony, virtue (the guarantee of individual and collective happiness) and the practice of charity, finds its aesthetic expression in the conception of edifying theatre, the representation and guarantee of a new world.
La Jambe de la Vérité. Sur un tableau de Tiepolo
Authors: Cusset Catherine
Published: June 2016

The leg of truth. On a painting by Tiepolo.

This article analyzes Giambattista Tiepolo's rococo allegory Time unveiling Truth , long known as Time ravishing Beauty. Its ambiguity of gestures and positions reveals the eroticisation of a theme which had until then signified the triumph of a spiritual Truth over the terrestrial world. This study tries to show, through an analysis of the incestuous relationship between Time and Truth and of the role of Cupid, situated between Truth's legs, that Tiepolo's painting suggests a specifically 18th-century conception of time as "occasion", or desire's moment of "truth".
Du nouveau sur Marguerite Delamarre et La Religieuse de Diderot
Authors: Flandreau Annie
Published: June 2016

New light on Marguerite Delamarre and Diderot's Religieuse.

This article presents documents, discovered in 1989, which modify our understanding of the relationship between Diderot's heroine and the real Marguerite Delamarre. The first (A.N., H5 3836) is a contract, dated 27 August 1759, concerning the transfer of M. Delamarre's life annuity from Longchamp Abbey to St Eutrope Abbey ; thus Diderot told the truth when he sent his heroine to St Eutrope in the second part of the novel. The second (A.N., M.C. ; Et : V : 832) is a procuration signed by Marguerite concerning her income, which proves that she was at Vernon Abbaye Royale on 9th August 1791. These documents thus throw new light on the elaboration of La Religieuse, by giving more details about the true story of M. Delamarre.
Les limites orientales de l'espace européen
Authors: Jager Patrick
Published: June 2016

Patrick Jager : The Eastern limits of Europe.

Fixing the Eastern frontier of Europe is a complex problem that changed over the 18th Century ; it is connected with the value-laden distinction opposing enlightened to barbarian. For travellers, Russia was part of Europe while the Greek Archipelago tended to be outside it. But between these two worlds was a frontier zone which was not a line but an area, a sort of no man's land which finally seems to take on its own cultural identity, being neither European nor Oriental. This zone includes the Archipelago, the Phanariot principalities and part of Russia, but its extent varies.
Le virtuose international : une création du 18e siècle
Authors: Milliot Sylvette
Published: June 2016

Sylvette Mm. tot : The international virtuoso, an 18th-century creation.

The appearance of the international virtuoso is generally said to date from the beginning of the 19th century ; however, while the myth of the soloist is certainly essentially romantic, the 18th century provided all the conditions for this development. The article traces the birth of the star system in which all the nations participated : Italy was the initiator due to the preeminence of its instrument-makers and its artists who travelled throughout Europe ; France ensured the popularisation of musical life thanks to the foundation of the sacred music concert which encouraged international exchanges and led to the first reviews in the press ; and in the second half of the century, Germany brought instrumental improvements and a new style. Thanks to these combined efforts, the virtuoso took his place as one of those cosmopolitans who have no fixed abode but are at home everywhere.
Types nationaux européens dans des œuvres de fiction françaises (1750-1789)
Authors: Herrero Isabel , Vazquez Lydia
Published: June 2016

Isabel Herrero & Lydia Vasquez : European national types in French

fiction (1750-1789).

In French fiction the European but also different national types are clearly shown through the characters portrayed. In travel fiction, a Frenchman voyaging through Europe meets different national types : the pale, cold, mercenary and irreverent Englishman ; the handsome but over-passionate, superstitious and insincere italian ; the lively but proud and lazy Spaniard. There is a negative vision of other nations whose descriptions are dictated more by a desire to reassert French nationality than to learn, for the particular descriptions conceal a Gallocentrism embodied in the travelling hero. He is objective, sensitive, delicate, polite, friendly and sociable.
L'enjeu européen du discours de flatterie
Authors: Mary Georges
Published: June 2016

Georges Mary : The European dimension of flattery.

The correspondence between Gustav III of Sweden and count Creutz, his ambassador in Paris from 1766 to 1783, reveals both the diplomatic role played by the latter and his importance as a go-between between the Prince and French philosophes of the Enlightenment. A careful strategy of flattery is deployed to help the ideas of the philosophes enter the dominant language of power so that the princes could appeal to it and thus regain in the secular domain what they were losing in the sacred domain. At the same time the philosophes gained status and legitimacy from this royal favour. Thus there was worked out a sort of contract laying down, in an ambiguous, typically 18th-century relationship, the link between the political and the philosophical.
Sur une ténébreuse affaire : l'incarcération de l'abbé de Prades à Magdebourg
Authors: Combes-Malavialle Jean-François
Published: June 2016

Jean-François Combes-Malavialle : Light on a sombre affair : the abbé

de Prades's imprisonment at Magdebourg.

This is a sort of appeal for review, not of a non-existent trial, but of serious accusations which have come down to us despite the absence of evidence and the gradual diminution of the charges made by the royal plaintiff himself. Prades's imprisonment at Magdebourg in 1757 is looked at from around the beginning of the Seven Years' War (August 1756), after the disastrous retrait from Kohlin (June 1757) and just before and after the victory at Rossbach (November 1757). An unknown document, combined with neglected or badly-exploited ones, also underlines psychological factors concerning the relations between the King, his lector, Prince Henry and Prince August-William ; the fact that the abbé was on good terms with the latter was frowned on by the king. It is here that we should look for the reasons for his incarceration, rather than seeking non-existent material evidence, confessions or witnesses.
De l'Auvergne à Odessa : la destinée de Jeudy-Dugour (1766-1840)
Authors: Pérol Lucette
Published: June 2016

Lucette Perol : From Auvergne to Odessa, the destiny of Jeudy-Dugour

(1766-1840).

For those curious as to how people lived through the troubled period of the Revolution, the life of Jeudy-Dugour provides an unusual case study. He was a historian, a professor, a bookseller, but above all a monarchist who courageously declared his beliefs during Louis XVI's trial ; he disappeared in Auvergne during the Terror, returned to Paris among the students at the Ecole Normale in Year III, adapted to political changes up to the declaration of the Empire and then emigrated to Russia where he became De Gouroff and was appointed chancellor of St Petersburg University at its foundation. Having laid his hands on some of Diderot's manuscripts, he sold copies to a Paris bookseller who published the first French edition of the Letters to Sophie Volland, the Rêve de D'Alembert and other texts.
Deleyre de l'Histoire des voyages (t. XIX) à l'Histoire des Deux Indes
Authors: Bénot Yves
Published: June 2016

Yves Benot : deleyre, from the Histoire des voyages (vol. xix) to the Histoire des deux indes.

During the years 1768-70 Alexandre Deleyre (1726-1796), later a member of the Convention and a regicide, both wrote vol. XIX of the Histoire des voyages (concerning the Greenlanders, the Kamchadals and the Lapps) and collaborated on the first edition of Raynal's Histoire des Deux Indes ; it is therefore interesting to see whether a comparison of the two works shows up the precise passages for which he was responsible in the first edition of Raynal's work. This non-exhaustive investigation has turned up partial conclusions which allow us to attribute to him the passages concerning Columbus's discovery of the West Indies, the first version of the passages on the Jesuits in Paraguay and other scattered fragments. Above all we emphasize Deleyre's negative attitude towards private property and towards the ideology of work as a duty.
L'évolution des tables des périodiques littéraires à l'époque de l'Encyclopédie
Authors: Vittu Jean-Pierre
Published: June 2016

Jean-Pierre Vittu : The development of tables of contents of literary periodicals at the time of the Encyclopedie.

In the middle of the 18th century there were many plans for tables of contents of literary periodicals, some of which succeeded, beginning with the Journal des Savants. Behind these publications we can find a publishing strategy, as can be seen from their link with rééditions of reviews dating from the turn of the century. Together with journals introducing other reviews, compilations (in periodical form or collections) and articles selected according to their origin or a particular theme, the publication of these tables of contents is part of a desire to make knowledge available, which is linked to the project of the Encyclopédie.
La Folie-Desmares à Châtillon
Authors: Langlois Gilles-Antoine
Published: June 2016

Gilles-Antoine Langlois : The Folie-Desmares in Châtillon.

A mass of unpublished documents enable us to reconstitute precisely the history of the Folie-Desmares in Châtillon, built in the early 18th century and then bought by the young banker Antoine Hogguer for his friend the actrice Charlotte Desmares. This house, which is one of the oldest private country houses remaining in the Paris region, is a rare and precious relic of a luxurious architecture and way of life, which has retained part of its charm and balance. Thiéry said before the Revolution that it was one of the most beautiful houses to be seen ; it is to be hoped that the forthcoming transformation of the building into a Town Hall will lead to an exemplary restoration.
Les extraits de lecture de Montesquieu
Authors: Desgraves Louis
Published: June 2016

Louis Desgraves : Montesquieu's reading.

Montesquieu's reading notes are of two types : firstly there are notes devoted to a particular subject grouped in notebooks — Anatomica, Juridica, Politica etc. (which are today lost), Collectio Juris and Geographica 2, which are extant ; and secondly there are notes concerning an author or a particular work. Most of this second category is unpublished. This article draws up the list of seventy-two of these notes together with : 1. the author and title of the work with a reference to the Catalogue of Montesquieu's library ; 2. the text of Montesquieu's quotation ; 3. the localisation of the manuscript ; 4. any publication. This collec¬ tion of texts is thus a contribution to the study of Montesquieu's sources.
Malthus avant Malthus. Concepts et comportements prémalthusiens dans la France d'Ancien Régime
Authors: Hecht Jacqueline
Published: June 2016

Jacqueline Hecht : Malthus before Malthus. Concepts and behaviour of

Premalthusians in prerevolutionary France.

From the Renaissance to the mid-17th Century, populationist mercantilism reigned virtually unchallenged in France. However, at the end of the 17th Century there appeared the first signs of pre-Malthusian concepts and even behaviour (economic analyses in terms of supply of the means of subsistence, minimum salary and declining productivity ; demographic analyses in terms of geometrical progression and destructive obstacles ; the search for the maximum of comfort and happiness ; and later marriage, even permanent celibacy). But by retaining an optimistic perspective and substituting artificial for moral restraint, both theo¬ rists and French couples finally demonstrated the failure of pre-Malthusianism in France.
Louis-Sébastien Mercier, lecteur et propagateur de l'économie politique
Authors: Dorigny Marcel
Published: June 2016

Marcel Dorigny : L.-S. Mercier, reader and populariser of economics.

Although Mercier was not a major economist of the late 18th Century, economics is always present in his writings, especially before the Revolution. He helped to popularise the issues that were at the heart of vital controversies, such as free trade in corn, luxury and social inequality, credit and currency, or property rights. He was a reader and propagator of other people's writings, but he was not a neutral observer. His radical, almost obsessive, hostility towards Quesnay's school did not make him an anti-liberal doubting the legitimacy of property rights or defending social egalitarianism. On the contrary, Mercier was a virulent defender of individualism and inequality as factors of unlimited economic progress. He belongs to one of the founding currents of French liberalism, distinct from the Physiocrats but which did not adopt all of the theories of the British school.
Sur la querelle de l'Akakia. Une lettre inconnue de Montesquieu à Maupertuis, présentée
Authors: Häseler Jens
Published: June 2016

Jens Hàseler : The Akakia Dispute. An unknown letter from Montesquieu

to Maupertuis.

This unpublished letter from Montesquieu to Maupertuis, dated 26th January 1754, found in the archives of the Paris Académie des Sciences, throws new light on the good relations that existed between the two philosophes. In particular it shows support for Maupertuis's position in the Docteur Akakia dispute and it adds to the small number of his supporters in France. In it La Condamine is revealed as a tireless intermediary between the President of the Prussian Academy and the author of the Esprit des Lois.
La constitution d'un recueil de textes clandestins
Authors: Quantin Jean-Louis
Published: June 2016

Jean-Louis Quantin : A collection of clandestine works.

The Sélestat Bibliothèque Humaniste possesses a collection of clandestine philosophical treatises which was hitherto unknown (ms 216). An examination of this collection clarifies important points in the history of certain works, in particular Dumarsais's Le philosophe. The collection also reflects the interests and curiosity of the person who copied them, who was obvioiusly anxious to make as complete an anti-christian collection as possible, to the extent of including two separate extracts from Meslier.
Chateaubriand et le despotisme oriental
Authors: Berchet Jean-Claude
Published: June 2016

Jean-Claude Berchet : Chateaubriand and oriental despotism.

It does not matter that the theory of "Oriental despotism" as developed by Montesquieu and reinterpreted by Volney is built on shaky foundations, for it served as a useful mask to denounce, despite censorship, different forms of "Occidental despotism". The same strategy was adopted by Chateaubriand when in 1811 he published the account of his journey to the East. His visit to Constanti¬ nople provides not only an opportunity to reassert his opposition to the Imperial régime, but also a place in which to set out his model of liberal Christianity associating for the first time Athens and Jerusalem. By stressing the political dimension of his Itinéraire, this article aims to show the origin of the principles which, continuing but also breaking with Enlightenment thought, guided the public career of the first Romantic during the Restoration.
Utopie française, auteur anglais ?
Authors: Dunmore J.
Published: June 2016

John Dunmore : A French utopia with an English author ?

The anonymous Fragmens du dernier voyage de La Pérouse (Quimper, an V) purported to give details of the discovery of Blue Island by La Pérouse' s expedition in 1788. It has been suggested that the author was Fr Receveur, member of the expedition or A. A. Dupetit-Thouars ; recently J. Gury put forward the name of Jacques Cambry. But whoever it was, he knew A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay (1789) by Watkin Tench, who had met La Pérouse at Botany Bay and knew fluent French. An analysis of these works and of his correspondence has led I.McLaren to suggest that Tench himself was the author of Fragmens, which would present the unusual case of a French Utopian tale being written in wartime by an Englishman.
Fragments en quête d'auteur
Authors: Gury Jacques
Published: June 2016

Jacques Gury : Fragments in search of an author.

This article, a reply to the previous one, points out that W. Tench, an officer in the Royal Marines who had met La Pérouse in Botany Bay in 1788, did stay in Britanny in 1795 and may have met, in Quimper, Cambry who is thought to be the author of Fragmens du dernier voyage de Lapérouse (Quimper 1797) (see DHS n° 22). It is however very unlikely that he provided Cambry with more than the prefatorial tale, and even his contribution of any source material has yet to be proven.
Philippe Chéry, premier illustrateur de Sade
Authors: Champarnaud François
Published: June 2016

François Champarnaud : Philippe Chéry, Sade s first illustrator.

Sade' s first, anonymous, work, Justine ou les malheurs de la vertu, appeared in 1791 with a frontispiece by Philippe Chéry, engraved by Carré in a neoclassical style which is austere enough to give the impression that this is an edifying work. The first paintings of Chéry (born 1759), on religious history, have unfortunately vanished, but from the Revolution he painted themes from Greek mythology, the Bible and above all portraits of contemporaries. Like Sade, he was interested in the theatre and published illustrations for Le Vacher' s Recherches sur les costumes et sur les théâtres de toutes nations. He was also an art critic, a defender of David and a republican, with the result that in 1813 he was looked on with suspicion. The article also mentions a pupil of David's, Mlle Le Roux de la Ville the elder, whose career developed during the Empire.
L'éclipsé de la musique baroque au début du 19e siècle
Authors: Cannone Belinda
Published: June 2016

Belinda Cannone : The eclipse of baroque music in the early 19th Century.

This article analyses the ideas behind writings celebrating the demise of baroque music, which began in the mid-1 8th Century. During the first two decades of the 19th Century, the term "French music" only applied to music composed before Gluck, who was considered to represent the beginning of a movement to perfect music. Lully and Rameau, who were no longer played, were accused of bad taste and of demoting music and harmony to an ancillary function. The history of music was therefore presented in terms of a break with the early 18th Century, whose French music is only referred to in terms of errors and depravity.
Raynal romancier et politique
Authors: Brot Muriel
Published: June 2016

Muriel Brot : Raynal, novellist and political writer.

The 8th book of the Histoire des Deux Indes owes much to Charlevoix's Histoire du Paraguay, and although the "tragic tale of a Spanish lady" is merely one of many borrowings, it was extensively rewritten in a way which emphasizes its novelistic character. In addition, although Raynal preserves Charlevoix's manichean perspective, he inverses the roles, rehabilitating the Indian, while the Spaniard (the victim in the original version) becomes a bloodthirsty barbarian whose methods of colonisation are both inhuman and politically inept. The literary base is both a satirical tool and a means of developing criticism of the Spanish

— which until then had been only concerned with political and economic issues

— to include humanitarian and ethical considerations.
Voyageurs au Levant à la recherche de l'Antiquité
Authors: Jager Patrick
Published: June 2016

Patrick Jager : Travellers in the Levant and the search for Antiquity.

The most common motivation mentioned by travellers in the Levant was the search for classical culture, and they each tried their best to contribute their own discovery. Yet there was a great difference between the erudite antiquarians and collectors of the early 18th Century and the philosophical travellers at the end of the century. The "Souvenirs" which they brought back fell into three types : objects, which laid the foundations for museum collections ; picturesque or scientific drawings ; and above all accounts in which a new sensibility was developed and new meditations were tried out.
Les voyageurs français et les musées italiens
Authors: Luciani Gérard
Published: June 2016

Gérard Luciani : Late eighteenth-century French travellers and Italian museums.

In their rediscovery of a more authentic classical antiquity than that of their predecessors in the age of Louis xiv, the French in the second half of the 18th Century used travel accounts, by literati like Barthélémy or Duclos, artists like Houel, art historians like Saint-Non, diplomats like Creuzé de Lesser, future politicians like Roland de la Platière or merely curious educated people like Sade. Enlightened Europe was rethinking museums while Italy was discovering, or excavating more rationally, the archeological sites of Campania ; thus it is interesting to study the reactions of travellers to the way Italians chose to exhibit new discoveries and reinterpret known antiquities in the light of neoclassical aesthetics. At the time when museums were abandoning the simple accumulation of objects, like that seen in the collections imagined by Pannini, for an organised arrangement like that behind Denon's organisation of the great Imperial Louvre, the echo of these great ideas can be found in French travel accounts.
L'imaginaire antique et le palladianisme des Lumières
Authors: Baridon Michel
Published: June 2016

Michel Baridon : Classical imagination and Enlightenment Palladianism.

The fall of absolutism in Britain removed the religious references of political thought and encouraged a new image of classical Rome. What was admired was no longer the unifying empire but the colonizing city and its balance between monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. This image of Rome was already present during the Renaissance with Macchiavelli, and Palladio seemed to be the architect who gave it its purest expression. Thus Palladianism was the style of the new politics, that of the Masonic ideal. Its low lines and staccato effects made it blend into the countryside and its modernity was affirmed by its rejection of the spectacular thrust of baroque geometry. It spread the forms and sensibility which are to be found in Fielding, Pope and Montesquieu, the main representatives of literary Palladianism.
Peinture et belles antiques dans la première moitié du siècle. Les statues vivent aussi
Authors: Démoris René
Published: June 2016

René Démoris : Painting and classical beauties in the first half of the century. Statues are also alive.

The art of the Rococo period, from La Fosse to Boucher in painting, had a strange reception in France ; it was violently attacked in the middle of the 18th Century, often considered in the 19th Century as the symbol of the frivolous aristocratic Enlightenment and sometimes later accused of being an art of enslave¬ ment abandoning the very purpose of art. We here try to analyse, in connection with a major reference for classical aesthetics — the relation to classical beauties as models — the position of artists who did not rebel against academic principles but who, by their practise, did in fact question the artistic ideology which developed from Du Bos to Diderot ; this ideology attributed certain social or moral aims to painting, a field in which writers wished to seize power and did in fact do so. The violence of the reactions to Rococo painting can be explained less by a relatively discreet immorality than by the latent critical charge of this artistic practice and its obsessions.
Antiquité, nature et nation chez Winckelmann
Authors: Espagne Michel
Published: June 2016

Michel Espagne : Antiquity, nature and nation in J. J. Winckelmann.

Antiquity is a construction in the work of Winckelmann. Greek man stylised by the History of Art in Antiquity is a result of the philological discovery of classical texts as seen in reading notes, reflection on works of art exhibited in the Dresden gallery and reflection on history in the Biinau library. There was also the experience of the Dresden court by a young provincial from the depths of German society. There was the desire for liberation from the constraints of erudition which, however, Winckelmann could not do without ; and finally the affirmation of national feeling against the French. One of the paradoxes of Winckelmann concerns the way in which the personal relationship with classical Antiquity was universalised into a European aesthetics and a German literary style.
Énée et Didon à la scène, ou l'art d'accommoder les restes
Authors: Martin René
Published: June 2016

René Martin : Dido and .Eneas on stage or how to use leftovers.

The last French tragedies inspired by book IV of the Aïnead were written during the 18th Century. Their authors, who were forced both to develop Virgil's rather thin diegesis and to innovate in this respect compared to their predecessors of the previous century, solved the problem by using two different tactics : they transformed the inflexible Trojan hero into a passionate lover ready to sacrifice his duty to his love, and they built up the secondary character of Iarbas, who became the joint rival and equal of �Eneas. Sometimes their unfaithfulness to Virgil was pushed even further into a sort of fictional mythology in which the Trojan hero gave up his mission and chose to reign over Carthage. Thus the survival of the episode imagined by Virgil was ensured by means of various betrayals, with results that were unequal but sometimes not devoid of interest.
Rousseau et Homère
Authors: Touchefeu Yves
Published: June 2016

Yves Touchefeu : Rousseau and Homer.

The opposition, for J.-J. Rousseau, of the values of nature and the polity is well known, as is the fact the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality and the Essay on the Origin of Language celebrate the beginning of society which, at the dawn of history, allowed for a golden mean between the indolence of primitive life and the tension of civil life. This explains why Rousseau paid such passionate attention to Homer, for the world of Achilles and Ulysses led him to precisely those important moments at which emerging society was as if in tune with the natural order. The reference to Homer is particularly present in Emile. While this treatise on education begins by opposing categorically the education of the individual and that of the citizen, the Homeric imagery invites the reader to dream of a time when the two figures of "natural man" and "citizen" were not yet clearly separated into their contradictory relationship.
Les ambigüités du philhellénisme. L'ambassade du comte de Choiseul-Gouffîer auprès de la Sublime Porte (1784-1792)
Authors: Grell Chantal
Published: June 2016

Chantal Grell : The ambiguities ofphilhellenism. Count Choiseul-Gouffiers's embassy to the ottoman court (1784-92).

The reign of Louis XVI was marked by the triumph of classical taste, in particular "Greek fashions". This article analyses, via Count Choiseul-Gouffier's embassy, the ambiguities of philhellenism. As a backdrop to it there was the decline of Ottoman power and the appetite of the European states looking forward to dividing up the spoils. The defence of classical Greece thus allowed them to provide a generous veil for much less generous aims. In the case of France, which was allied in theory to the Sultan, this philhellenic ideology was used to hide the weakness of their divided diplomacy and keep up the illusion, thanks mainly to archeological research undertaken by the ambassador, that the "country of literature and art" continued to play an active and effective role in near eastern affairs.
L'Antiquité chez Philippeaux
Authors: Bouineau Jacques
Published: June 2016

Jacques Bouineau : Philippeaux and classical antiquity.

Philippeaux refers to classical Antiquity as to a catechism (well-known examples, minor and limited borrowings), but his references on the subject of teaching are rather more original. It is true that, like many others, he emphasizes the example of Greece and in particular Sparta, but he puts the moderns not the ancients in the first place. As far as administration is concerned, he proposed dividing France into tens, hundreds and thousands, claiming to borrow from Tacitus, which seems strange and leads one rather to think that Philippeaux had found his supposed model in his imagination. But classical Antiquity is also used to combat the church of his own time, seen as an abject monster compared to the ideal democracy of the primitive church.
Cinq lettres de Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger à Helvétius
Authors: Inguenaud Marie-Thérèse , Smith David W.
Published: June 2016

Marie-Thérèse Inguenaud and David Smith : Five letters from Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger to Helvétius.

Five holograph letters by Boulanger (by whom only letter one was hitherto known) are here published ; they were written to Helvétius shortly before his death, between January and August 1759. Although they are all unsigned or signed with a pseudonym ; they can nevertheless be formally attributed to Boulan¬ ger thanks to the handwriting and the content. The first is the original of the prefaratory Letter from the author to M... in the Recherches sur l'origine du despotisme oriental, whose attribution was generally contested. The four others, all hitherto unknown, share the common theme of illness. They are interesting in that they confirm the biographical elements provided by Diderot in his preface to L'Antiquité dévoilée as well as throwing some light on an unknown character and providing precise information on medical practice in the mid-18th Century.
Une prédication républicaine au milieu du siècle : Les Bagatelles morales de l'abbé Coyer
Authors: Cheminade Christian
Published: June 2016

Christian Cheminade : A republican preacher in the mid century : abbé

Coyer's Bagatelles morales.

From 1747 onward abbé Coyer (1707-1782) wrote nine pamphlets, published in 1754 under the title of Bagatelles morales, which attack, using buffoonery, the vices and stupidities of his age. This moral satire leads him to question the social order, denouncing an unequal and corrupting society and condemning the overwhelming domination of the rich and the misery of the people. He preaches a return to natural equality thanks to which reconciled humanity would escape from vice and unhappiness. He proposes more and more clearly a new model of political and social relations on the lines of Athens and Rome, which he sees honoured in Basel, Amsterdam and London. This republican sermon, which is close to the thought of Rousseau, shows the existence in the mid century of a republican current still very distinct from the Enlightenment.
L'allégorie révolutionnaire, de la Liberté à la République
Authors: Jourdan Annie
Published: June 2016

Annie Jourdan : The revolutionary allegory : from liberty to the republic.

Revolutionary allegories have often been studied but clever, even brilliant, analyses have been based on a few carefully chosen examples or on specifically popular forms, resulting in hasty generalizations which falsify historical truth. This article tries to distinguish true from false and takes into account a large number of projects envisaged by the authorities in their drive to "republicanize" public space. For French revolutionary imagery was above all conceived by politicians to represent themselves as a political body and as the nation. Already in 1789 there emerged a political imagery dominated by allegory. From Liberty to the Republic, how did the French Revolution wish to represent itself, and what principles did it want to embody ? An analysis of different projects (statues, monuments, vignettes, seals, coins) shows that political representation does not always coincide with proclaimed principles and that the public image is rarely a reflection of reality. Often the sign masks the evanescence of its subject, whether it is popular sovereignty, liberty or the republic.