| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1. |
Record Nr. |
UNINA9910820258703321 |
|
|
Autore |
Stalnaker Joanna |
|
|
Titolo |
The unfinished Enlightenment [[electronic resource] ] : description in the age of the encyclopedia / / Joanna Stalnaker |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pubbl/distr/stampa |
|
|
Ithaca [N.Y.], : Cornell University Press, 2010 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
ISBN |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Descrizione fisica |
|
1 online resource (256 p.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Disciplina |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Soggetti |
|
French literature - 18th century - History and criticism |
Description (Rhetoric) - History - 18th century |
Encyclopedias and dictionaries, French - History and criticism |
Natural history - France - History - 18th century |
Enlightenment - France |
France Intellectual life 18th century |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lingua di pubblicazione |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Formato |
Materiale a stampa |
|
|
|
|
|
Livello bibliografico |
Monografia |
|
|
|
|
|
Note generali |
|
Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nota di bibliografia |
|
Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-231) and index. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nota di contenuto |
|
Buffon and Daubenton's two horses -- Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's strawberry plant -- Diderot's word machine -- Delille's little encyclopedia -- Mercier's unframed Paris -- Description in revolution -- Conclusion : virtual encyclopedias. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sommario/riassunto |
|
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. |
|
|
|
|
|
| |