Title The unfinished Enlightenment : description in the age of the encyclopedia / Joanna Stalnaker

Published Ithaca [N.Y.] : Cornell University Press, 2010

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Description 1 online resource (xvi, 240 pages) : illustrations Contents 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 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 Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-231) and index Notes Print version record Subject 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 LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- French. Description (Rhetoric) Encyclopedias and dictionaries, French Enlightenment French literature Intellectual life Natural history SUBJECT France -- Intellectual life -- 18th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85051440 Subject France Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780801462344 0801462347

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