The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and philosophical movement that occurred in Europe, especially Western Europe, in the 17th and 18th centuries, with global influences and effects. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as natural law, liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, better known as Encyclopédie, was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It had many writers, known as the Encyclopédistes. It was edited by Denis Diderot and, until 1759, co-edited by Jean le Rond d'Alembert.
Jacques Pierre Brissot, also known as Brissot de Warville was a French journalist, abolitionist, and revolutionary leading the faction of Girondins at the National Convention in Paris. The Girondins favored exporting the revolution and opposed a concentration of power in Paris. He collaborated on the Mercure de France and the Courier de l'Europe, which sympathized with the insurgents in the American colonies.
Antoine de Rivarol was a Royalist French writer and translator who lived during the Revolutionary era. He was briefly married to the translator Louisa Henrietta de Rivarol.
The philosophes were the intellectuals of the 18th-century European Enlightenment. Few were primarily philosophers; rather, philosophes were public intellectuals who applied reason to the study of many areas of learning, including philosophy, history, science, politics, economics and social issues. They had a critical eye and looked for weaknesses and failures that needed improvement. They promoted a "republic of letters" that crossed national boundaries and allowed intellectuals to freely exchange books and ideas. Most philosophes were men, but some were women.
The Counter-Enlightenment refers to a loose collection of intellectual stances that arose during the European Enlightenment in opposition to its mainstream attitudes and ideals. The Counter-Enlightenment is generally seen to have continued from the 18th century into the early 19th century, especially with the rise of Romanticism. Its thinkers did not necessarily agree to a set of counter-doctrines but instead each challenged specific elements of Enlightenment thinking, such as the belief in progress, the rationality of all humans, liberal democracy, and the increasing secularisation of society.
18th-century French literature is French literature written between 1715, the year of the death of King Louis XIV of France, and 1798, the year of the coup d'État of Bonaparte which brought the Consulate to power, concluded the French Revolution, and began the modern era of French history. This century of enormous economic, social, intellectual and political transformation produced two important literary and philosophical movements: during what became known as the Age of Enlightenment, the Philosophes questioned all existing institutions, including the church and state, and applied rationalism and scientific analysis to society; and a very different movement, which emerged in reaction to the first movement; the beginnings of Romanticism, which exalted the role of emotion in art and life.
Robert Choate Darnton is an American cultural historian and academic librarian who specializes in 18th-century France.
The Republic of Letters was the long-distance intellectual community in the late 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and the Americas. It fostered communication among the intellectuals of the Age of Enlightenment, or philosophes as they were called in France. The Republic of Letters emerged in the 17th century as a self-proclaimed community of scholars and literary figures that stretched across national boundaries but respected differences in language and culture. These communities that transcended national boundaries formed the basis of a metaphysical Republic. Because of societal constraints on women, the Republic of Letters consisted mostly of men. As such, many scholars use "Republic of Letters" and "men of letters" interchangeably.
Daniel Roche was a French social and cultural historian, widely recognized as one of the foremost experts of his generation on the cultural history of France during the later years of the Ancien Régime. Roche was elected an International member of the American Philosophical Society in 2009.
A libelle is a political pamphlet or book that libels a public figure. Libelles held particular significance in France under the Ancien Régime, especially during the eighteenth century, when the pamphlets' attacks on the monarchy became both more numerous and venomous. In recent years, cultural historian Robert Darnton has written on the libelles, arguing for their subversive power of the late eighteenth century exercised in undermining monarchical authority.
Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism is a book by Abbé Augustin Barruel, a French Jesuit priest. It was written and published in French in 1797–98, and translated into English in 1799.
Deism, the religious attitude typical of the Enlightenment, especially in France and England, holds that the only way the existence of God can be proven is to combine the application of reason with observation of the world. A Deist is defined as "One who believes in the existence of a God or Supreme Being but denies revealed religion, basing his belief on the light of nature and reason." Deism was often synonymous with so-called natural religion because its principles are drawn from nature and human reasoning. In contrast to Deism there are many cultural religions or revealed religions, such as Judaism, Trinitarian Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and others, which believe in supernatural intervention of God in the world; while Deism denies any supernatural intervention and emphasizes that the world is operated by natural laws of the Supreme Being.
The Société typographique de Neuchâtel was a Swiss publishing house and bookseller that operated between 1769-1794. Their archives, consisting of around 25,000 letters and various types of account books held in the Bibliothèque publique et universitaire de Neuchâtel, are an unparalleled source for the study of the eighteenth-century European book trade. The STN published over 220 works, over 500 volumes in total, the majority of which were counterfeit editions. Clients included Jacques Garrigan; Perisse Frères; Rigaud, Pons & Compagnie; and Luke White.
Marc-Michel Rey was an influential publisher in the United Provinces, who published many of the works of the French philosophes, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his day, he was the largest and most important publisher in the French language in the United Provinces.
Clandestine literature, also called "underground literature", refers to a type of editorial and publishing process that involves self-publishing works, often in contradiction with the legal standards of a location. Clandestine literature is often an attempt to circumvent censorship, prosecution, or other suppression. In academic study, such literature may be referred to as heterodox publications.
The Leo Gershoy Award is a book prize awarded by the American Historical Association for the best publication in English dealing with the history of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Endowed in 1975 by the Gershoy family and first awarded two years later, the prize commemorates Leo Gershoy, professor of French history at New York University. It was awarded biennially until 1985, and annually thereafter.
L'An 2440, rêve s'il en fut jamais is a 1771 novel by Louis-Sébastien Mercier.
The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France is a 1996 book by literary scholar Robert Darnton. Darnton maps the "forbidden sector" of eighteenth-century French literature, using archival records that showed the popularity of forbidden books including pornography, utopian literature, and a popular genre of slanderous political works. In 1995, the book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
Marie-Claude Felton, is a French-Canadian writer, teacher and historian who specializes in 18th-century France. Her book, Maîtres de leurs ouvrages: l’édition à compte d’auteur à Paris au XVIIIe siècle, made significant contributions to the understanding of publishing practices and the myriad issues relating to changing conceptions of literary property.
