The Enlightenment

In the eighteenth century a group of French writers decided that the way to improve the world was to question everything: religion, government, law and custom. They are called the philosophes, and they wrote novels, plays, essays, letters and a vast encyclopaedia, always in the belief that reason, spread widely enough, would change society. They were sometimes imprisoned and often exiled, and their books were burned. This chapter looks at four of them. It is also the chapter in which the writer as public figure, the theme of the whole course, first becomes fully visible. Names, dates and attributions are given from general knowledge and flagged where they should be checked.

Salons and the Republic of Letters

Ideas spread through printed books, but also through conversation. In the salons of Paris, hostesses such as Madame Geoffrin and, later, Julie de Lespinasse gathered writers, scientists, artists and aristocrats at regular dinners and receptions (check the names). The salons gave thinkers an audience, protection and a place to test their ideas. Women, who were excluded from the universities and the academies, played a central role in them. The writers thought of themselves as members of an international "republic of letters", corresponding across borders.

Four Voices

Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet, who wrote as Voltaire, was the most famous writer of his century. After a quarrel with a nobleman he was exiled and spent some time in England in the later 1720s, which shaped his admiration for English freedoms; his Lettres philosophiques (1734) praised them at the expense of France and caused a scandal (check the dates and the title). Candide (1759) is a short satirical tale that mocks the idea that everything happens for the best and ends with the advice to cultivate one's garden (check). Voltaire also campaigned, which brings in the case that opens this course's last thread.

Diderot and the Encyclopédie

The Encyclopédie, edited by Denis Diderot with the mathematician Jean le Rond d'Alembert, appeared in volumes from 1751 to 1772 (check the details). It aimed to collect all human knowledge, including the practical arts of the trades, in a single reference work, and it attracted contributions from many of the leading thinkers. Its articles sometimes hid critical comments about religion and the state behind ordinary-looking entries (check). The authorities repeatedly tried to suppress it, and at one point withdrew its licence, yet the work continued (check). Diderot also wrote novels and dialogues, such as Jacques le fataliste, in a free, playful style that looks forward to much later fiction (check).

Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, born in Geneva, stood somewhat apart from the other philosophes and quarrelled with several of them, including Voltaire (check). His Du contrat social (1762) begins with the famous sentence that man is born free and is everywhere in chains, and argues that legitimate government depends on the general will of the people (check the wording and the interpretation, which are debated). His book on education, Émile, and the Confessions, a frank autobiography published after his death, established the writer's own inner life as a subject (check the dates). Émile and the Contrat social were condemned in 1762, and he had to flee (check). His ideas were used by many sides in the Revolution that followed, and are still debated.

Exercises

Next chapter: Romanticism & the Great Novel, which covers Hugo, Dumas, Stendhal and George Sand.