Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Diderot (1713-1784)
-Modest artisan background
-Jesuit education
-Tried a number of different professions and then became a writer
-Frequented the coffee houses in Paris and became a friend of the philosophes
-Also connected in the literary underground
-Religious crisis?
-First secret marriage produces one child, Angelique
-First jail time in 1749, connected to publication of scurrilous novel and the essay "On Blindness"
---essay discusses a materialist philosophy
Encyclopedie (1751-1772)
-What makes it radical?: kind of knowledge gathered and how it is treated
-Modeled on Ephraim Chamber's Cyclopaedia
-Seeks all knowledge and truth
-Diderot recruits Jean Le Rond D'Alembert to the project
-Both outsiders in their way
-Anthropocentric worldview
Tree of Knowledge
Radical redefinition of authority
Radical articles and cross-references
--"Ame" ("On the Soul" by Diderot)
--"Anthropophagie" and "Eucharist"
Major Controversies including:
-D'Alembert quits in 1758
-Project is shut down, books are burned, Diderot hangs on.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
-Charle-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu
-Born 1689, died 1755
-Educated at the Oration College de Juilly and University of Bordeaux
-Married Jeanne Lartigue, had three children
-Became President a Mortier in the Parlement of Bordeaux
-Published Persian Letters in 1721, became a literary star
-Travelled in Europe
-Published Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans, 1734
-Published The Spirit of the Laws, 2 vols., 1748
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Gloomy last years of Louis XIV
-military defeat
-finds religion
-death of son and grandsons
-dies in 1715
-Louis XV is only five years old
-Philippe II, Duke of Orleans becomes Regent
Phillippe II of Orleans
-eccentric, licentious, and innovative
-Son of Philippe I, brother of Louis XIV, and German Princess, Elizabeth-Charlotte or Liselotte
A break with the past:
-Relaxed and pleasure-loving
-Baroque to Rococo
-Public to Private
-Economic shifts
Paris building boom
-Philippe II lived at the Palais-Royale; other aristocrats moved into town too
Renewed position of aristocrats in the government
-Polysynodie
Foreign Policy
-Triple Alliance (France, England, Dutch Republic)
Financial Experiment:
-John Law: State Bank, expansion of credit, overseas trading company
-Disaster of the "Mississippi Bubble"
Cultural change:
-Legalization of the Italian Comedy
Antoine Watteau (1684-1721)
-Flemish
-Nature and Humanity
-Went to Paris
-did decorative arts, including chinoiseries and singeries
-suffered from tuberculosis
-Patrons: family Crozat
-Italian Opera
-Gilles
-Embarkation from Cythera (1717)
-The Faux-Pas
-L'Enseigne de Gersaint (1721)
