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The Unfinished Enlightenment : Description in the Age of the Encyclopedia / Joanna Stalnaker.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2011]Copyright date: ©2011Description: 1 online resource (256 p.) : 5 halftonesContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780801448645
  • 9780801462344
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 840.9 005 00 22
LOC classification:
  • PQ265 .S72 2010eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
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
Summary: 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.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780801462344

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 online access with authorization star

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.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 02. Mrz 2022)