The Unfinished Enlightenment : Description in the Age of the Encyclopedia /
Stalnaker, Joanna
The Unfinished Enlightenment : Description in the Age of the Encyclopedia / Joanna Stalnaker. - 1 online resource (256 p.) : 5 halftones
Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- FIGURES -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- Part I: Natural Histories -- 1. Buffon and Daubenton's Two Horses -- 2. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Strawberry Plant -- Part II: Encyclopedias -- 3. Diderot's Word Machine -- 4. Delille's Little Encyclopedia -- Part III: Moral and Political Topographies -- 5. Mercier's Unframed Paris -- 6. Description in Revolution -- Conclusion: Virtual Encyclopedias -- Bibliography -- Index
restricted access http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec
In The Unfinished Enlightenment, Joanna Stalnaker offers a fresh look at the French Enlightenment by focusing on the era's vast, collective attempt to compile an ongoing and provisional description of the world. Through a series of readings of natural histories, encyclopedias, scientific poetry, and urban topographies, the book uncovers the deep epistemological and literary tensions that made description a central preoccupation for authors such as Buffon, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Diderot, Delille, and Mercier. Stalnaker argues that Enlightenment description was the site of competing truth claims that would eventually resolve themselves in the modern polarity between literature and science. By the mid-nineteenth century, the now habitual association between description and the novel was already firmly anchored in French culture, but just a century earlier, in the diverse network of articles on description in Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie and in the works derived from it, there was not a single mention of the novel. Instead, we find articles on description in natural history, geometry, belles-lettres, and poetry. Stalnaker builds on the premise that the tendency to view description as the inevitable (and subservient) partner of narration-rather than as a universal tool for making sense of knowledge in all fields-has obscured the central place of description in Enlightenment discourse. As a result, we have neglected some of the most original and experimental works of the eighteenth century.
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
In English.
9780801448645 9780801462344
10.7591/9780801462344 doi
Description (Rhetoric)--History--18th century.
Encyclopedias and dictionaries, French--History and criticism.
Enlightenment--France.
Enlightenment.
French literature--History and criticism.--18th century
Natural history--History--18th century.
Natural history--History--France--18th century.
Europe.
History.
Literary Studies.
LITERARY CRITICISM / European / French.
PQ265 / .S72 2010eb
840.9 005 00
The Unfinished Enlightenment : Description in the Age of the Encyclopedia / Joanna Stalnaker. - 1 online resource (256 p.) : 5 halftones
Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- FIGURES -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- Part I: Natural Histories -- 1. Buffon and Daubenton's Two Horses -- 2. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Strawberry Plant -- Part II: Encyclopedias -- 3. Diderot's Word Machine -- 4. Delille's Little Encyclopedia -- Part III: Moral and Political Topographies -- 5. Mercier's Unframed Paris -- 6. Description in Revolution -- Conclusion: Virtual Encyclopedias -- Bibliography -- Index
restricted access http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec
In The Unfinished Enlightenment, Joanna Stalnaker offers a fresh look at the French Enlightenment by focusing on the era's vast, collective attempt to compile an ongoing and provisional description of the world. Through a series of readings of natural histories, encyclopedias, scientific poetry, and urban topographies, the book uncovers the deep epistemological and literary tensions that made description a central preoccupation for authors such as Buffon, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Diderot, Delille, and Mercier. Stalnaker argues that Enlightenment description was the site of competing truth claims that would eventually resolve themselves in the modern polarity between literature and science. By the mid-nineteenth century, the now habitual association between description and the novel was already firmly anchored in French culture, but just a century earlier, in the diverse network of articles on description in Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie and in the works derived from it, there was not a single mention of the novel. Instead, we find articles on description in natural history, geometry, belles-lettres, and poetry. Stalnaker builds on the premise that the tendency to view description as the inevitable (and subservient) partner of narration-rather than as a universal tool for making sense of knowledge in all fields-has obscured the central place of description in Enlightenment discourse. As a result, we have neglected some of the most original and experimental works of the eighteenth century.
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
In English.
9780801448645 9780801462344
10.7591/9780801462344 doi
Description (Rhetoric)--History--18th century.
Encyclopedias and dictionaries, French--History and criticism.
Enlightenment--France.
Enlightenment.
French literature--History and criticism.--18th century
Natural history--History--18th century.
Natural history--History--France--18th century.
Europe.
History.
Literary Studies.
LITERARY CRITICISM / European / French.
PQ265 / .S72 2010eb
840.9 005 00