bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Jean Potocki rentré de Chine trop tôt...
Authors: Beauvois Daniel , Stroev Alexandre , Triaire Dominique
Published: June 2016

Jean Potocki : Mémoire sur l'ambassade de Chine. Presented by Daniel Beauvois, Alexandre Stroev and Dominique Triaire.

In 1806, Jean Potocki returned from China furious and disappointed. He had been the scientific director of the mission sent to Pékin a year earlier by Alexander I of Russia, which had just failed miserably, having got no further than Ulan-Bator. According to Potocki, it was clearly the fault of the Russian personnel, who were self-important and incompetent. On the way, he wrote a Mémoire addressed to the Foreign Minister, in which he recounted the story of the mission and analysed the reasons for its failure. The incomplete draft he kept was until now the basis for the various editions of the work. We provide here the complete original Memoire sent to the Minister, discovered in the Foreign archives of the Russian Empire. Annexed is a summary written in 1808, from the Paris Archives, showing that there was for a time a more or less official cooperation between Napoleon and Alexander.
Grimm correcteur de Catherine II. Sur un «fonds Grimm» inconnu
Authors: Otto Véronique
Published: June 2016

Véronique Otto : When Grimm corrected Catherine II. An unknown Grimm archive.

A German trail forgotten by 18th-century scholars, despite its link with the descendents of Mme d'Epinay, has led to the discovery in Austria of a modest archive of copies belonging to F. M. Grimm. A systematic comparison of these copies with the originals reveals that although these texts by Catherine II (including a letter to Voltaire) were not unknown, the complete or partial copies made or commissioned by Grimm are different enough to be interesting from several points of view. This article gives examples of alterations, ranging from the correction of spelling to inexplicable rewriting, while the thematic choice revealed in the extracts is above all related to political questions. Despite the uncertainties surrounding their purpose and precise date, these papers are useful for throwing new light on the familiarity existing between the Empress and her factotum, who felt he could make such sweeping corrections to some of the letters she sent him.
Comment perfectionner l'éducation, ou les propositions de Dominique-François Rivard
Authors: Granderoute Robert
Published: June 2016

Robert Granderoute : How to improve education, or Dominique-François Rivard's proposals.

Rivard's reflections on pedagogical reform, formulated in the context of the numerous proposals triggered by the expulsion of the Jesuits from France in 1762 and based on his long experience as Professor at Paris University, are particularly interesting. They stand out thanks to their clear modernizing aim, concerning both subjects and teaching methods and the future teachers for whom a theoretical and practical training is to be provided. But these reflections, which are aimed at making study easier and accessible to a greater number, are combined with a traditional conception of humans and a religious belief which is strongly marked by the author's Jansenism.
L'axe masculin/féminin chez Edmund Burke. De l'esthétique à la politique
Authors: Fuchs Michel
Published: June 2016

Michel Fuchs : Gender in Edmund Burke's esthetics and politics.

This article deals with Burke's aesthetics from the point of view of his surprisingly gendered preconceptions. While he set out to establish an aesthetics based on the human passions in general, these passions are rapidly seen to be heavily gendered, for the sublime is masculine and the beautiful feminine. Equally surprising is the fact that when Burke became a politician, he did not feel the need to redefine his aesthetic categories but indulged in the widespread prejudices which, in Britain in particular, tended to sexualize the social classes. He even maintained these sexual/social prejudices when confronted with the French Revolution, thereby managing to attack the 'philosophers of the shambles' while at the same amplifying their very sarcasms against the nobility. His 'truly republican' defense of the old regime is at times very similar to the attacks on the monarchy made by the advocates of the French republic.
La «gaieté française» ou la question du caractère national dans la définition du rire, de L'Esprit des lois à De la littérature
Authors: Huchette Jocelyn
Published: June 2016

"French gaiety" or the question of national character in the definition of laughter, from L'esprit des lois to De la littérature.

The myth of 18th-century French gaiety or frivolity continues to inhabit the collective consciousness and feed literary nostalgia. But one can ask what Voltaire's contemporaries thought and how French character was represented in that period of the Europeanisation of culture. The question of "national character" (which obviously poses scientific problems) became an important issue in reflection on laughter in the second half of the century. On the one hand, the question was how to defend (ou condemn) national identity by means of a comic norm ; awareness of a type of specifically French (as opposed to English, German, Italian or Spanish) laughter involves important political elements and allows us to mesure resistance or openness to foreign identities. On the other hand, the Enlightenment obviously developed the study of laughter by relating it more and more sytematically to a specific cultural environment.
Le rire sardonique ou la limite du rire
Authors: Delon Michel
Published: June 2016

"Sardonic" laughter or the limits of laughter.

"Sardonic" or convulsive laughter which is involuntary and purely organic, provoked by a blow, a wound or poison, is an extreme case which illustrates the hesitations of theology and classical thought in the face of light-heartedness which can always threaten the pre-eminence of the soul. The Encyclopédie devotes several articles to the question and Poinsinet de Sivry wrote a Traité des causes physiques et morales du rire. Sade integrates this type of laughter into his dark vision of a strictly mechanical nature, and the counter-revolutionary tradition used it against Enlightenment optimism.
Le mouvement du rire chez Kant
Authors: Menninghaus Winfried
Published: June 2016

The movement of laughter in Kant.

We look at Kant's analysis of laughter in Metaphysic of Morals, in Anthopology from a Pragmatic Point of View and in particular in the first section of Critique of Judgement, which ends by examining the different functions of laughter. For Kant, laughter is primarily a beneficial principle, as it strengthens the link between body and soul ; for his definition of laughter replaces the usual idea of comic disparity by a temporally condensed sequence of expectation and disappointment which, by suddenly freeing tension, produces physical well-being. Thus for Kant, laughter possesses a therapeutic value. But laughter is also part of a more general reflection on aesthetic judgement. If laughter exposes us to the "absurdity", or the pure "nothingness" of senses, it corresponds to one of the dimensions of the creative potential of genius, for genius implies both the tendency to absurdity and its correction. Finally, laughter is close to music for the two combine in the expulsion of the hermeneutic process towards a finite void.
Un brouillon de Valérie de Mme de Krüdener dans les archives de Moscou
Authors: Gretchanaïa Elena
Published: June 2016

A draft of Mme de Krûdener's Valérie in the Moscow archives.

The fact that, unlike for her other writings, there is no manuscript of Mme de Kriidener's novel Valérie (1803), has led to doubts that it is in fact by her. The holograph manuscript of the Lettre de Gustave à Valérie, preserved in her archive in Moscow, provides clear proof and also indicates the obvious help she received from her French literary friends. The text of the holograph draft, with no traces of any other hand in the writing, is however different from that of the published version. The changes and the removal of some sentences and fragments in the published text can be explained above all by their overemphasis and the concern for sentimental and religious "moderation", on the lines of classical models and the French dislike of exaggeration.
La Révolution française entre les Indiens et le modèle américain
Authors: Bénot Yves
Published: June 2016

The French Revolution, Indians and the American model.

On the one hand, American (in fact North American) Indians were one of the essential sources for the reflexion of the French Enlightenment ; but on the other, after 1776, the birth of the U.S.A. finally provided the model of a large state choosing a republican constitution. However, this republic was almost continuously at war with the Indians in what could not be presented as a just war. In addition, relations between the two republics were increasingly difficult after the British-American treaty of late 1794, which was the result of Washington's pro-British policy. This study attempts to analyse how these contradictions and developments affected the image of the Indians in France during these years. The works studied provide contradictory images, unrelated to the political positions of their authors in France. Nevertheless we observe a gradual "desacralisation" of Indian peoples, which is particularly brutal in Volney, later followed by Tocqueville.
Les véritables auteurs de la Révolution française de 1789 démasqués. Discours de persécution et crimes d'indifférenciation chez F.N. Sourdat de Troyes
Authors: Beaurepaire Pierre-Yves
Published: June 2016

Les véritables auteurs de la Révolution de France de 1789. Persecution mania and the crime of undifferenciation.

To understand how the monarchical order had collapsed into revolutionary chaos and to give this meaningless event a meaning, F. N. Sourdat de Troyes's Les véritables auteurs de la Révolution de France de 1 789 falls back on conspiracy theory. He elaborates an illogical but well-constructed scenario based on the crime of lack of differenciation, fomented by the "foreign Protestant Freemason philosopher who denies French Catholic identity" from his lair in Nîmes. This case study tries to test out the explanatory value of René Girard' s keys for the reading of persecution mania (in Le bouc émissaire ) when applied to counter-revolutionary writings. It brings out the dangerous efficiency of the counter-revolutionary reading of the crisis of 1789 and its effect on 19th and 20th century minds, for which it had to be regularly brought up to date.
L'éloge paradoxal de la politique des Anciens chez Helvétius
Authors: Spitz Jean-Fabien
Published: June 2016

Helvétius's paradoxical praise for classical politics.

Helvétius occupies a mid-way position in the, 18th-century debate between supporters and opponents of classical egalitarian republics ; although he recognises that they held virtue and liberty in high esteem and thus possessed a moral force that modern peoples have lost, he nevertheless tries to destroy their prestige by showing that the political model which they are still seen to represent is no longer valid for modern societies. For modern societies are highly unequal and are dominated by money ; thus the most important rewards are distributed by individuals instead of the people. Helvétius concludes that the new structure of society means that it is no longer virtue but deference that leads to the satisfaction of the citizens' interests.
Les néologues autour de Friedrich Nicolai et de sa revue Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek (1765-1792). Une volonté de réforme théodogique «éclairée»
Authors: Kirscher Roger
Published: June 2016

Roger Kirscher : Neologians in the circle of Friedrich Nicolai's Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek (1765-1792).

Nicolai's periodical played a major role, due to its large number of reviews of very varied works, to its long life and its very wide readership. Theological book reviews, the most numerous, were written by a small number of mainly Lutheran theologians, who have been identified. The objective of these "neologians" was to discover the authentic meaning of the Scriptures which, according to them, had been confiscated by orthodox Lutherans and their rigid dogma. Thus Scripture was subjected to philological and historical criticism in order to make revelation "intelligible". This led to a questioning of doctrines such as eternal punishment, original sin, grace and the Trinity. This relativisation of doctrine produced an ethical theology centred on the vita activa and the practice of virtue, separating theology from religion. Without undermining the divinity of Christ or immortality, the neologians opened the path to Kant's conception of moral autonomy.
La représentation de l'énonciateur et du destinataire dans le discours historique
Authors: Penke Olga
Published: June 2016

The representation of speaker and recipient in historical writing.

This article analyses the importance of personal forms in philosophical histories. The transformation of history-writing and the development of the historian's role are highlighted in historical writing from the early 18th Century. Personal expression, which characterises both historical discourse and other literary genres, both revealed a crisis and contributed to revitalise the genres. An analysis of works by Fénelon, Lenglet de Fresnoy, Montesquieu, Voltaire, D'Alembert and Diderot shows that, paradoxically, the historian-philosopher tries to convince the reader of the authenticity of his historical knowledge and the objectivity of his presentation by personal forms and the continual staging of the couple constituted by speaker and recipient ; the result is to suggest to the reader that he is taking part in the birth of the work.
Les négoces atlantiques français. Anatomie d'un capitalisme relationnel
Authors: Pétré Grenouilleau Olivier
Published: June 2016

The history of French Atlantic trade and traders has been built up as a result of successive research, which has never been put into a single perspective. Hence the contradictory images of this trade, which this article attempts to re¬ examine and reinterpret. To this end, connections are made between structures (the forces at work within trading companies) and their functions (their role). A diagram of the working organisation of Atlantic trade is proposed, centred around the idea of a «relational capitalism ». Subsequently, we present some tools which enable us to refine the analysis, by means of the notions of 'background1, 'generation3, 'network3 and 'identity3.
Le commerce brésilien et la transnationalité. Le cas de la compagnie Corsico (1715-1730)
Authors: Pigning Ernst
Published: June 2016

This article explores the nature of the European slave trade on the West African coast in the early 18th Century. Due to the transnational character of this commerce in human beings, all attempts to regulate the market proved impossible. This is especially clear in the case of the short-lived Corisco Company ; this company, run by a Frenchman and backed by the Portuguese Crown, was unable to compete with Dutch military strength and Brazilian commercial power. The failure of both Dutch company officials and Portuguese authorities to regulate the trade demonstrated the strength of market forces beyond official control.
La santé navale et l'Atlantique comme champs d'expérimentation : les «hôpitaux flottants»
Authors: Gainot Bernard
Published: June 2016

The organisations which were founded in the last quarter of the 18th Century in Philadelphia, London and Paris to campaign against the slave system in the American colonies were in close contact with each other. Their first aim was the abolition of the slave trade, but also the ending of slavery itself, at least in the United States. In fact, well before they took an institutional form, links had been forged between individual abolitionists — whose number grew throughout the century — in the great slaving nations. However, this sort of International5 developed very unequally in the three nations, because of significant differences in their political contexts. This 'Abolitionist International3 did not of itself obtain concrete results, but the ties thus created lasted, and in the long run they played a role in the later abolitions of the 19th Century.
Médiations et appropriations culturelles dans l'espace maçonnique atlantique
Authors: Beaurepaire Pierre-Yves
Published: June 2016

The Atlantic was not a fringe or a backwater, nor a captive market for European freemasonry ; instead, it was a meeting-place that was becoming inde¬ pendent, with a solid structure in transatlantic networks based on trade, family and religion. The elites of the Atlantic world invented original structures which took account of the high levels of sociability found in both the Caribbean and New England. The rituals and organisation of the higher grades were not simply assimilated but became the objects of a real cultural appropriation. On the American mainland, this led to the emergence of new fusions, some of which then moved across the Atlantic during the 19th Century to conquer the Old World.
La métaphore théâtrale dans Les Égarements du cœur et de l'esprit
Authors: Perchellet Jean-Pierre
Published: June 2016

The fashion for theatre in 18th-century Paris was unprecedented, to the extent that one can say that theatricality was interiorised by high society. Crébillon's novel provides a significant example of this process. On the one hand, the author plays on dramatic or dramatised space, uses theatres as a background, as a trigger of speech (theatre) or as the scene of erotic contemplation (opera). On the other hand, he presents his characters as 'actors in society : accomplished, good or bad actors, but also apprentice actors learning about social interaction. Thus one can draw a parallel between this novel and Diderot's Paradoxe.
De l'homme, le premier ouvrage de Jean-Paul Marat
Authors: De Cock Jacques
Published: June 2016

This article provides a bibliographical analysis of the different versions of Marat's first work, which was first published in English, in two different versions, before appearing in French. The various reviews of these works enable us to date them precisely. An analysis of the peculiarities of the title and a study of the correspondence concerning the work confirm the desire expressed by Marat in his preface to write a manifesto against materialism. This approach helps us to understand the originality of Marat's thought, apparent in his first publication, his debt to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the reasons for his long conflict with the "Philosophes3, in particular Voltaire and Condorcet.
Du jansénisme au libéralisme. Itinéraires de quelques abbés du siècle
Authors: Cottret Monique
Published: June 2016

This article studies a peculiar 18th-century literary genre, the fencing manual, in which French masters tried to set out the pedagogy of crossing swords. Thus these manuals provide an elegant savoir-vivre in which the salute, respect for the rules and the way of holding the weapon are signs of distinction. However, reading them in a different way, we can see that the century and its élites were more violent than one might think. The manuals also teach the reader to kill the enemy correctly cin serious cases3 ; here illustrations accompanying the more prudent written text show clearly homicidal fencing. In a century when the Cartesian paradigm of reason was undermined, a more instinctive and resolutely deadly fencing is transformed by including the sensation of touch. Here the civilising process becomes an art of slaying one's neighbour delicately and ferociously.
Les Nouvelles ecclésiastiques et les Lumières (année 1750)
Authors: Froeschlé-Chopard Marie-Hélène
Published: June 2016

This article analyses the importance of Enlightenment themes in the Jansenists' clandestine journal, taking 1750 as a test. The Nouvelles ecclésiastiques only dealt with religion, recounting persecutions or reviewing theological works. On the occasion of the condemnation of Colonia's Bibliothèque janséniste, the paper drew up a list of good books, often from the 17th Century, written by the 'friends of truth'. But despite this fascination with Port-Royal, current events intruded ; the journal reviewed works, all described as irreligious, by Molinists or by Philosophes such as Montesquieu or Buffon, discussed at length. The journalists refused any bridge between good and bad books, and the Philosophes were clearly the authors of the latter ; but the persecuted Appelants described by the journal are readers of forbidden works and examples of resistance to authority, seen as blind and arbitrary. Thus, while the Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques violently opposed the ideas of the Enlightenment in its book reviews, these ideas reappear in the biographies of exemplary Jansenists, seen as champions of individual conscience against oppression.
Lumières et refuge huguenot. Sur les itinéraires intellectuels de Bayle et de La Baumelle
Authors: Bost Hubert
Published: June 2016

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This article looks at the link between 'enlightened thought' and French protestantism in the case of two exceptional figures, Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) and Laurent Angliviel, called La Beaumelle (1726-1773), who share several biographical characteristics. The parallel in their lives is accompanied on the intellectual level by a comparision between their works and some of the ideas or values they defended, which is not surprising as La Beaumelle was a great reader of Bayle' s works. These different facts can help us to think about the link between Enlightenment and Huguenot refugees ; as the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) forbade the practice of French Protestantism in France, its link to Enlightenment has to be looked at from an international perspective. While the Revocation censured any public reflection or religious expression by the reformed Churches, it paradoxically stimulated the theological, philosophical and ethical reflection of Huguenot exiles.
L'évolution du concept de conscience chez Marie Huber
Authors: Krumenacker Yves
Published: June 2016

A study of the works of the Lyons theologian Marie Huber (1695-1753) reveals an interesting development in her concept of toleration, from Calvinism to Rousseauism. In her childhood, Ostervald's Catechism showed her that the conscience must be enlightened by Scripture, while around 1715 the influence of Pietism led her to see her conscience as the voice of God himself. Twenty years later, conscience became a natural light placed by God in each one of us, influencing the will through feeling. After rejecting Ostervald's reasonable reli¬ gion, Marie Huber thus also distanced herself from extraordinary phenomena, in a development similar to that of many other radical Pietists in Switzerland, Germany or England. The development was however not yet complete, for at the end of her life she no longer refers to conscience, as the exercise of 'right reason3 is sufficient to establish the truth.
L'abbé Gauchat : un apologiste des Lumières
Authors: Straudo Arnoux
Published: June 2016

In 1768, when abbé Gauchat's Accord du christianisme et de la raison was published, the conflict between defenders of the Enlightenment and those of religion had reached its height. But behind these criticisms, we can see common principles. Thus, Gauchat is willing to accord an important place to the physico-theological proof of God, referring to Newton. The principle of causality is part of the reflection of many enlightened thinkers. Likewise, the moralisation of Christianity, in a utilitarian perspective, used the philosophes' arguments against the risk that Christianity represented for society. Finally, the use of the principle of non-contradiction was similar to the principles of the rationalists. Gauchat's position was based on a Christianised cogito from which the notion of Redemption had disappeared.
L'abbé Coyer et l'Essai sur la prédication (1781) ou une réconciliation du christianisme et de la philosophie
Authors: Cheminade Christian
Published: June 2016

The year before he died, abbé Coyer (1707-1782) wrote an Essai sur la prédication, Carême entier en un seul discours, presented as a sermon, in which he tried to return to his vocation as a Catholic priest. He in no way rejected the ideas he had defended throughout his career, which led to him being classified as a representative of the Enlightenment ; but for the first time he presented his moral criticism, socio-political denunciations and reform projects as inseparable from his belief in Christian doctrine, and above all from the practice of evangelical morality derived from the Sermon on the Mount. He defined an ideal guiding the virtue of both the individual and citizen, promoted by the philosophe, and the Christian, taught by the priest. But this synthesis was elaborated in the context of an awareness of failure, for in 1781 the French, despite their proclamations, were neither Christians, nor citizens, nor men.
Le concept de despotisme et l'abus des mots
Authors: Richter Melvin
Published: June 2016

'Despotism, a basic concept (Grundbegriff) in 18th-century French political discourse, had a long history which could also be understood by seeing how it was distinguished from 'tyranny. It was also a contested concept, in the sense of Reinhart Kosellek, as it could be understood in many different senses, either pejorative or more neutral. Any attempt to give it a new application or meaning had to take account of this history, which created a weight against which one had to struggle and often led to unexpected political consequences, undesired by those who used it. This was the case during the crisis preceding 1789, when the key elements of the revolutionary concept of a despotic Old Régime developed, in which the absolute state, allied to the aristocracy and the church, perpetuated feudalism and superstition.
Séduction et droit royal. Une question juridique dans le Paysan parvenu de Marivaux
Authors: Vickermann-Ribémont Gabrielle
Published: June 2016

The so-called Marly Declaration of 22nd November 1730 concerning abduc¬ tion ('rapt de séduction5) showed the King's refusal to accept unequal marriages ; its theory, cloaking its social intention behind reason and morality, had been developed by royal legal experts since the Council of Trent in order to avoid conflict with the Church, the sole authority on marriage. This legal context is behind the theme of seduction in many literary works of the 1730s, which attributed a social purpose to it. In Marivaux's Paysan parvenu, Jacob's adventures are apparently conditioned by legal restraints, in a virtual lawsuit based on legal theory and practice. He manages to transgress social barriers and obstacles thanks to his seductive tales in which he invents a past and a possible future ; they are emblematic of the grand tale represented by the Mémoires de M***. It is true that the upstart narrator no longer hides his origins, but he says nothing of the reality of seduction, thus turning his story into a new seducer's tale looking forward to a better society.
Les représentations de personnages juifs au théâtre : tradition française et réception de l'Aufklärung
Authors: Ehrenfreud Yaël
Published: June 2016

The theatre, a centre of sociability in the 18th Century, also competed with the Church by providing a form of knowledge. By including Jewish characters in its repertory, this stronghold of lay culture helped to change representations of them hitherto popularised by 'tradition. Jews, representing a mysterious fluc¬ tuating otherness and more or less tolerated in different countries, had appeared on the French stage since the beginning of the century as miserly and often rich and lecherous figures ; their 'heresy, only implicitly religious, was directly behavioural. It was in the German theatre, thanks to Lessing and his idealisation of the Jews, that there appeared the first cultural signs of their integration into Enlightened Europe. Here we analyse the meaning and implications of the way the French were inspired by this repertory and translated and adapted it.
La note et le vers chez Voltaire
Authors: Boucher Gwenaelle
Published: June 2016

Voltaire wanted to allot different functions and domains to verse and prose, but the prose notes which accompany his poems reveal exchanges and even interpénétration or interference between the two. The prose notes, which are developed to the extent that they sometimes submerge the poem and weave parallel networks totally unrelated to it, are not only a necessary digression, an extension indispensable for its comprehension and interpretation, but become in addition an important space for Voltaire to express his philosophy. Thus the invasive system of prose notes, which is active even if it does not concern all of its readers, is a decisive factor in the dethroning of poetry in favour of prose in Voltaire's work. Prose, at first disdained for its facility and theoretical lack of elegance, manages finally, as a result of a progressive and inverse development, to replace poetry, which gradually loses its initial dominance and preeminence.
Nîmes à la veille de la Révolution : une ville au miroir de ses spectacles lyriques
Authors: Escoffier Georges
Published: June 2016

The Journal de Nîmes from 1785 to 1789 provides echoes of the musical life of an expanding industrial and commercial town.While the attention paid to musical performances is partly explained by the fact that this journal was run by one of the shareholders of the theatre, it enables us above all to judge the place of musical amusement in the culture of the Nîmes élites. It is not only a sociable activity, as the social tensions of the period, which only filter through to the Journal in the form of charity concerts and balls, stimulate the traders to affirm their social distinction by showing their disinterestedness. Music, and particularly concerts, whose codes of perception are being elaborated here, are involved in the constitution of a new governing class based on economic, social and cultural distancing.
Les philologies de l'épicurisme
Authors: Bury Emmanuel
Published: June 2016

In his mock-heroic poem La Marfisa bizzarra, Count Carlo Gozzi (1720-1806) uses historical fiction to picture 18th-century Venice as Paris under Charle¬ magne's reign, when the Emperor is an old man and the Paladins of his court have forgotten their past heroism. Gozzi depicts his enemies, the advocates of new enlightened ideas within this framework of general decline. According to him, these ideas had spread subversion in Venice, in a reign of irréligion encouraged by the mistakes of a degenerate clergy who were unable to keep under control a society ready for any kind of upheaval.
L'atomisme dans les Pensées philosophiques. Diderot entre Gassendi et Buffon
Authors: Stenger Gerhardt
Published: June 2016

Silvia, the leading actrice of the Luigi Riccoboni company who created Marivaux' s great roles, was baptised Jeanne Rose Guyonne Benozzi in Toulouse. As this article reveals, the parish baptismal records indicate that she was born on 27th June 1701 and that the baptism was attended by the leading Toulouse aristocrats ; her godfather was Jean Mathias de Riquet, President of the Toulouse Parlement and her godmother was the wife of another member of the Parlement. This leads to questions concerning the presence of Italian actors in Toulouse at the time. We do not know whether Silvia's Venetian parents were itinerant players or whether they had been in Toulouse for some time working with Joseph Tortoriti, whose company had been expelled from Paris in 1697.
L'épicurisme selon Shaftersbury : fébrifuge et imposture
Authors: Badelon Françoise
Published: June 2016

The reference to Epicurus may seem a strange approach to Shaftesbury's work ; nevertheless this English author, who is generally presented as a follower of Stoicism, reserves a particular place for ancient and modern Epicureans. There is no doubt that he sees Epicureanism as an antifebrile treatment, to correct enthusiastic humours, and as an imposture when the Epicurean cure becomes itself the object of devotion by means of stratgems of pleasure. Thus Shaftesbury, like Voltaire, defends the therapeutic use of materialism, as a system which religious enthusiasm forces us to enter in order to provide its antidote. In addition, materialism without atomism, in its hylozoistic version, becomes a doctrine which reveals the power and unity of nature. This is the version of the English author that was translated by Diderot and Robinet.
Arouet, poète épicurien. Les voix de l'épicurisme dans la poésie de jeunesse de Voltaire
Authors: Cronk Nicholas
Published: June 2016

This article studies the nature and extent of Epicurean influence on Arouet' s early poetry, up to 1722, when he writes the poem later known as the Epître à Uranie. The influence of Chaulieu and the Société du Temple is evident in the two epistles in verse and prose published in the Mercure in 1716 and 1717 ; in these poems, for a wide public, the Epicureanism hardly goes beyond conventional libertinism. In other poems, however, circulated in manuscript among a limited circle of friends, the Epicurean tone is more daring : more libertine in A Mile Duclos, more philosophical in the Epître à Uranie. Most radical of all is the Epître à Mme de G., in which religion is shown as antithetical to happiness and a source of superstition ; Voltaire exercised strict control over the circulation of this work, which was never published in his lifetime. This spectrum of Epicurean voices, targetted at different audiences, is pivotal in the genesis of Voltaire's poetic voice.
La Mettrie : une éthique de l'inconstance, une métaphysique de la tendresse
Authors: Markovits Francine
Published: June 2016

When La Mettrie calls himself Mr Machine, when he makes the machine into a proper name designating a person, this appears to the moralist as a paradox and even a veritable contradiction. This article attempts to analyse this paradox by tracing the systematic character of this sceptic who plays at anonymity but whose work, while seeminlgy written in bits and pieces, in fact posesses an overall coherence of structure. It is a new version of Epicureanism, praising pleasure in all its forms. From the effects of the composition of the work to the effects of the instability of the individual, from the pleasure in the text to physical pleasure, La Mettrie makes pleasure the representative of the subject.
Réminiscences épicuriennes dans les Égarements du cœur et de l'esprit de Crébillon
Authors: Salem Jean
Published: June 2016

This article discusses nine themes in Crébillon's Égarements (1736-38) which confirm the impression that it conveys many philosophemes taken from Epicurus and Lucretius : education and manners pervert nature ; imagination leads to excesses such as wordly victory or jealousy ; amorous passion, of two sorts, is linked to instinct, as feeling is desire added to pathos ; wordly agitation and its desires aim at forgetting our interior boredom ; passion is enchantment and blindness and its occasional cause leads to unease and obsession ; the notion of the right moment transfers the Greek notion of kairos to the sexual domain ; the Platonic system is absurd as only pleasure is real ; self-interest is the main motive for human actions ; in the world the abuse of words replaces thought. We see that Crébillon's work contains a coherent philosophy, in which sexuality is the normal sanction for what novelists usually treated as a more or less impure feeling.
Modèles violents et sensations fortes dans la genèse de l'œuvre de Sade
Authors: Warman Caroline
Published: June 2016

The Essai sur l'art oratoire (1799) is the only treatise on rhetoric published during the French Revolution ; in a period of powerful public speech, its actors were suspicious of eloquence and eliminated rhetoric from school curricula. Droz's reflection takes into account political upheaval and tries to establish the conditions, forms and importance of a new democratic speech. This article studies the immediate reaction to the Essai and its practical implications by comparing
Le suicide de Pidansat de Mairobert
Authors: Merrick Jeffry
Published: June 2016

Louis-Sébastien Mercier, a prolific dramatist whose works were translated all over Europe, had difficulty winning recognition in Paris ; La Harpe described him as a 'provincial dramatist'. A study of the theatrical registers of France's major towns and the copyright registers in the Mercier papers at the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal shows that his plays were frequently performed in the provinces until the beginning of the Romantic period. From these archives we can reconstruct the provincial repertory, thus throwing light on the relationships linking author, actors and public. It is this relationship that contributed to the originality of Mercier' s dramatic production.
L'Encyclopédie et le droit de coloniser
Authors: Bénot Yves
Published: June 2016

The frequently-quoted Encyclopédie article COLONIES is a mainstream piece by Véron de Forbonnais. But the reader should not be misled by this, for one needs to pay attention to the small subversive core of this ideologically mixed bag, which alone constituted the scandal and interest of the Encyclopédie, and without which it would be nothing but a dictionary. Damilaville brings out clearly the condemnation of all colonisation, using expressions already found in Bacon. A similar rejection is indicated by the fact that colonisation plays no role in Quesnay's analysis of the production of wealth. The truly innovative spirit of the Encyclopédie, often obscured by the obligatory presence of the intellectual conformists and notables of the time, clearly questioned the right to colonize.
Entre l'impatience du connaître et la patience du concept. Pour Georges Benrekassa
Authors: Berkman Gisèle
Published: June 2016

The strength of Georges Benrekassa's work comes from the fact that he reveals Enlightenment philosophy's salutary impurity, while removing the barriers between different fields of knowledge. His work, evolving from a historico-philosophical interest to the question of intepretation, confronts the question of the use to which the Enlightenment can be put today. G. Benrekassa has posed this question in his major works, but also in his many articles, while always placing himself on both sides of the frontier between thinking and knowing. For him, the act of interpretation is a search for a sort of perpetually moving critical point, whether he is studying Montesquieu's poetry of argument or the comparative power of the hermeneut and the interpreter. Benrekassa's reflective horizon is that of a philia, a possible community in the field of knowledge.
Les écrits autobiographiques des femmes russes du 18e siècle rédigés en Français
Authors: Gretchanaïa Elena
Published: June 2016

Whatever the perception of French philosophy by the authors of the autobio¬ graphies with which we propose to deal in this article, the Enlightenment provoked and formed their strategy which consisted in making the shadow supposed to surround the feminine universe disappear. This feminine universe is shown more clearly than in the writings of French authoresses. In the texts of Catherine the great, countess Dashkowa, Mme de Kriidener and the writer of the Note secrète feminine ambition expresses itself more radically than in Western Europe during the same period. Whilst in France a woman could aspire to no more than the rank of queen of a Salon and was excluded from the public stage during the French Revolution, in Russia, the same period saw women making revolutions, taking power, dictating their will and drawing up self-portraits in full conscious¬ ness of their historical role : the first was empress, the second member of both Russian academies and numerous European ones, the third counsellor to Alexan¬ der the 1st. Unlike French female aristocratic memoirs, where a need to provoke passion and awaken masculine desire is often manifest, the quest for masculine love and real or imaginary desires are generally absent from our Russian texts. Women — mothers, daughters or friends — , and not men, become objects of sensibility and affection. Men are left on the margins of life. The idea that passion is women's main occupation, established and maintained in France by authors and authoresses in the 18th century, is hardly relevant here. The Russian authoresses insist on their status as women and their femininity is their defining aspect.
Surprises et leçons d'un inventaire : la prose féminine non-fictionnelle au 18e siècle
Authors: Girou-Swiderski Marie-Laure
Published: June 2016

Officially, in the Academy's terms, a specialist in the painting of animals and fruits (still life), Chardin was clearly interested in animals. His pictures display a very coherent treatment of the theme which culminated in the celebrated Raie, his academic reception piece, herald of his future career. This enigmatic painting fascinated his contemporaries, probably owing to its subject and most particular mode of representation with its unexpected inherent violence. The article attempts further to elucidate the nature and power of this effect and to link it to the new current of sensibility to the living which began in the 18th century.
Réécrire l'histoire de la femme. Un roman de Mme de Puisieux
Authors: Vanoflen Laurence
Published: June 2016

In the middle of the 18th century, if novels are par excellence women's novels, they often expose their "misfortunes" ; apart from a few figures of libertines characterized by their ignominy, it is almost a platitude to say that women's liberty has no more place than their happiness. In this perspective L'Education du marquis de *** ou les Mémoires de la comtesse de Zurlac (1753) by Mme de Puisieux (1720-1798) can but attract one's attention. Judged to be a mediocre novel by Etienne Servais (Le Genre romanesque en France depuis cla Nouvelle Héloïse jusqu'aux approches de la Révolution, 1922), considered less severely by Robert Mauzi, it refuses to compel its heroine to choose between the only two ways apparently open to the virtuous woman in most 18th -century fiction : death or a sentimental retreat. Refusing the austere ethics of La Princesse de Clèves which is unsurprising in view of its author, a friend of Diderot, it offers a positive dimension to women's fate.
Des révolutions dans les représentations de lectrices
Authors: Aragon Sandrine
Published: June 2016

Jean-Baptiste Banks, freemason, widower of a local Bourbon woman, fell deeply in love with a slave, thus offending colonial order. We wish, on the basis of the numerous episodes involved in this affair, to reflect on the social and ideological foundations of the colonial history of Bourbon island. The Masonic approach applied here offers an original take for a detailed perception of the forces in place and the values at stake within the insular elite. It also affords renewed knowledge of colonial masonry with its deep contradictions between founding principles and a society with a slavery based economy.
Pensée sceptique et correspondance féminine : Marie Du Deffand et Isabelle de Charrière
Authors: Krief Huguette
Published: June 2016

According to Demahis's article entitled "Femme" in the Encyclopédie, women are less capable than men of abstract thought. The aim of the present article is to re-evaluate this cliché by looking at the correspondences of Marie du Deffand and Isabelle de Charrière, two women of the Enlightenment. Their intense epistolary activity constitutes an interesting domain for the study of scepticism and the transgression which it introduced into 18th-century society. These women doubted particularly whether Christian religion was the best way to provide knowledge concerning human nature and the creation of the world. The numerous letters which Marie du Deffand exchanged with Voltaire show that she assumed a radical empiricism, while Isabelle de Charrière, in search of social ethics, was certainly close to Voltaire's deism. Nevertheless, their common interest in naturalist philosophy and their opposition to dogmatism reveals the extension of scepti¬ cism and enlightened ideas to women's writings.
Astronomie des dames
Authors: Le Lay Colette
Published: June 2016

With his Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686), Fontenelle opened up an era of diffusion of knowledge for a female audience. Encouraged by the book's huge success, many authors followed the trend, in particular in Italy and in England. The science of the stars, mainly based on observation, was particularly suited to such enterprises. These 'Astronomies for Women5 usually took the form of a dialogue between a knowledgeable man and a woman avid for learning. Whilst most Enlightenment women were satisfied with this initiation through reading, a few crossed over to the actual practice of astronomy. In the shadow of their great man, they observed, carried out the calculations rendered necessary by the ephemeris or drew up charts of eclipses. The century which followed was not to offer such a proliferation of quality publications or vocations of female astronomers. It is thus not excessive to describe the 18th century as the golden age of women's astronomy.
E. Gibbon et les Mémoires littéraires de la Grande-Bretagne : contextes d'un projet de périodique et raisons d'un échec
Authors: Mankin Robert
Published: June 2016

This essay considers the early literary projects of Edward Gibbon, and particularly the journalistic project he undertook with his friend Georges Deyver-dun in 1766-1767. For two annual issues, they wrote and published a French-language journal in London to inform continental readers about significant deve¬ lopments in British culture. With roots in the Huguenot republic of letters, and ambitions regarding France as well ; with articles on figures as various and important as Boswell, Adam Ferguson, Sterne and Walpole among others, plus an original contribution from Hume, the journal should have been a success. This essay analyses some of the reasons for its failure, and also examines the Mémoires Littéraires as part of the legacy of the dispute between Hume and Rousseau. The journal's role in Gibbon's future career as an historian is also discussed.
Diderot et les «sites» de la fraîcheur
Authors: Leca-Tsiomis Marie
Published: June 2016

Among so many articles on grammar' which he wrote for the Encyclopédie, in 1757, Diderot published a short article on FRAICHEUR (coolness) which is an authentic prose poem. If one looks at Diderot's subsequent works, novels, art criticism, correspondence, essays, one comes across so many harmonics of FRAICHEUR that one sometimes gains the impression of having reached the most constant and deepest aspect of Diderot's musings. Is following the permanent circulation which exists between these texts, and marking the networks of invention they reveal, not a way of finally liberating oneself from the absurd, long-defended dichotomy between Diderot's contribution to the Encyclopédie and his so-called literary works ?
La promenade architecturale de Mélite : initiation au libertinage ou démonstration de savoir-vivre dans la petite maison de Jean-François de Bastide
Authors: Martin Carole
Published: June 2016

An analysis of Jean-François de Bastide' s La Petite Maison, this article investigates the way in which the correlation existing between architecture and decorum at the time of Louis XIV is both maintained and transformed in eighteenth-century libertine texts into a relationship between space and conve¬ nience, while the tension resulting from this opposition of continuity and change comes to characterize libertinage itself. Referring to the work that sociologist Norbert Elias wrote on Court Society in which, using Versailles as an example, he drew a parallel between architecture and etiquette as emanations of social order, Bastide' s text can be read as documenting a shift from courtly values toward bourgeois standards, although this shift remains paradoxically set in that most aristocratic of spaces — a petite maison. The pleasure pavilion, in this respect, is symbolic of a phase when a number of societal mandates still coincided — social mores and personal convenience, ostentation and consumption, corres¬ pondence between image and status, on the one hand, and transparency of form and function on the other.