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Detecting the Philosophical Ethos: The Persuasive Power of Enlightenment Literary Self-fashioning

Detecting the Philosophical Ethos: The Persuasive Power of Enlightenment Literary Self-fashioning

Publié le par Florian Pennanech (Source : I. Monette & H. Roman)

In the Encyclopedie's “paratexte”, as well asin several of its articles, Diderot and d'Alembert take pains to construct the ethos of the Enlightenment philosophe who suffers for the greatergood of Mankind. With this in mind, Diderot's claims of having sacrificed muchof his life to this magnum opus mightbe at odds with what one reads “au detour” of a sentence in his correspondence,where he states very pragmatically that his work for the Encyclopedie will serve to provide his beloved daughter with adowry...

From ourstandpoint as 18th century scholars, lacking the analytical “reperes”that a classically educated reader or writer of the French Ancien Regime would have had as a second nature, rhetorical devicesof self-fashioning within the text—be they called ethos, literary self, or authorial voice—that would have beeneasily-recognizable to a certain readership have become partially opaque to us.Therefore, while restricting our inquiry to philosophical, scientific, andhistorical texts, we aim to find out if comparing works intended forpublication with more private texts by the same author, such as memoirs orcorrespondence, would enable us to detect these authorial strategies moreaccurately.

This panel seekspapers that will shed light upon strategies of identification of the authors' ethos in the literary France of the turnof the century on to the 1760s. While in many genres, for example the novel andthe play, to name just a few, the text's intentionality is made more obvious bya narrative voice which could often be conflated with the author's, we endeavorto better understand the impact of the intentional construction of an authorialpresence—however veiled it may be—upon the persuasive power of philosophical,scientific, and historical texts.

Papers can be inEnglish or French. Send 250-400 word proposals to I. Monette & H. Roman,Johns Hopkins University, Department of German & Romance Languages &Literatures, imonette.hroman@hotmail.com.

Deadline:  September30, 2009

Please includewith your abstract:

Name and Affiliation

Email address

Postal address

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A/V requirements(if any; $10 handling fee)

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