Journal Et Apologetique: La Lecture Polemique des Philosophes Dans les "Memoires de Trevoux"
Dissertation, Boston College (
1995)
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Abstract
My dissertation studies the polemical reading of the philosophes in the Memoires de Trevoux , a literary journal founded by the Jesuits of the College Louis-le-grand. At the time the literary journal published mainly reviews of newly printed books. In the first part I analyze the Memoires de Trevoux as literary journal: its literary and apologetic intention, its relationship with other types of periodicals, the elements which contribute to its functioning: the protector, the public, the editors and the authors, the rhetoric of the reviews and its function in the reading process. The second part studies the eighteenth-century usage of the term philosophe, a widely diffused but rarely defined term, by analyzing two contemporary dictionaries: the Dictionnaire de l'Academie and the Dictionnaire de Trevoux, a serial of texts collected by the database ARTFL: The American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language, a co-operated project by the CNRS and University of Chicago, the articles in the Memoires de Trevoux , and the works of those who named themselves philosophes. The third part studies the polemical reading of the philosophes by the Jesuit editors, their polemical strategies and the confrontation of the Jesuits positions and the philosophes' positions. My dissertation takes a different approach from previous studies, because I analyzed the specificity of the genre of literary journal, the evolution of the term philosophe, and the actual reading process