Diderot's Part

Diderot's Part PDF Author: Andrew H. Clark
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351944290
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
Drawing upon the rich heterogeneity of Denis Diderot's texts-whether scientific, aesthetic, philosophic or literary-Andrew Clark locates and examines an important epistemological shift both in Diderot's oeuvre and in the eighteenth century more generally. In Western Europe during the 1750s, the human body was reconceptualized as physiologists began to emphasize the connections, communication, and relationships among relatively autonomous somatic parts and an animated whole. This new conceptualization was part of a larger philosophical and epistemological shift in the relationship of part to whole, as discovered in that of bee to swarm; organ to body; word to phrase; dissonant chord to harmonic progression; article to encyclopedia; and individual citizen to body politic. Starting from Diderot's concept of the body as elaborated from the physiological research and speculation of contemporaries such as Haller and Bordeu, the author investigates how the logic of an unstable relationship of part to whole animates much of Diderot's writing in genres ranging from art criticism to theatre to philosophy of science. In particular, Clark examines the musical figure of dissonance, a figure used by Diderot himself, as a useful theoretical model to give insight into these complex relations. This study brings a fresh approach to the classic question of whether Diderot's work represents a consistent point of view or a series of ruptures and changes of position.

Diderot's Part

Diderot's Part PDF Author: Andrew H. Clark
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351944290
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
Drawing upon the rich heterogeneity of Denis Diderot's texts-whether scientific, aesthetic, philosophic or literary-Andrew Clark locates and examines an important epistemological shift both in Diderot's oeuvre and in the eighteenth century more generally. In Western Europe during the 1750s, the human body was reconceptualized as physiologists began to emphasize the connections, communication, and relationships among relatively autonomous somatic parts and an animated whole. This new conceptualization was part of a larger philosophical and epistemological shift in the relationship of part to whole, as discovered in that of bee to swarm; organ to body; word to phrase; dissonant chord to harmonic progression; article to encyclopedia; and individual citizen to body politic. Starting from Diderot's concept of the body as elaborated from the physiological research and speculation of contemporaries such as Haller and Bordeu, the author investigates how the logic of an unstable relationship of part to whole animates much of Diderot's writing in genres ranging from art criticism to theatre to philosophy of science. In particular, Clark examines the musical figure of dissonance, a figure used by Diderot himself, as a useful theoretical model to give insight into these complex relations. This study brings a fresh approach to the classic question of whether Diderot's work represents a consistent point of view or a series of ruptures and changes of position.

Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely PDF Author: Andrew S. Curran
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 1590516729
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
Best Book of the Year – Kirkus Reviews A spirited biography of the prophetic and sympathetic philosopher who helped build the foundations of the modern world. Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world’s first comprehensive Encyclopédie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity–for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality. One of Diderot’s most attentive readers during his lifetime was Catherine the Great, who not only supported him financially, but invited him to St. Petersburg to talk about the possibility of democratizing the Russian empire. In this thematically organized biography, Andrew S. Curran vividly describes Diderot’s tormented relationship with Rousseau, his curious correspondence with Voltaire, his passionate affairs, and his often iconoclastic stands on art, theater, morality, politics, and religion. But what this book brings out most brilliantly is how the writer's personal turmoil was an essential part of his genius and his ability to flout taboos, dogma, and convention.

Selected Writings on Art and Literature

Selected Writings on Art and Literature PDF Author: Denis Diderot
Publisher: Penguin Classics
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Dialogues

Dialogues PDF Author: Denis Diderot
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Two Plays by Denis Diderot

Two Plays by Denis Diderot PDF Author: Denis Diderot
Publisher: Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures
ISBN: 9781433113635
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was one of the French philosophers and writers of the Enlightenment. This volume contains the first English translations of his plays, The Illegitimate Son and The Father of the Family. These complex and very entertaining plays delve into the attitudes of the middle-class, bourgeois society and reveal an eighteenth-century «suburbia» that populates dramatic and suspenseful situations and settings. The translations are vivid and contemporary and bring the plays alive to early twenty-first-century stage and culture.

New Essays on Diderot

New Essays on Diderot PDF Author: James Fowler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139500554
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
The great eighteenth-century French thinker Denis Diderot (1713–84) once compared himself to a weathervane, by which he meant that his mind was in constant motion. In an extraordinarily diverse career he produced novels, plays, art criticism, works of philosophy and poetics, and also reflected on music and opera. Perhaps most famously, he ensured the publication of the Encyclopédie, which has often been credited with hastening the onset of the French Revolution. Known as one of the three greatest philosophes of the Enlightenment, Diderot rejected the Christian ideas in which he had been raised. Instead, he became an atheist and a determinist. His radical questioning of received ideas and established religion led to a brief imprisonment, and for that reason, no doubt, some of his subsequent works were written for posterity. This collection of essays celebrates the life and work of this extraordinary figure as we approach the tercentenary of his birth.

Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot

Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot PDF Author: Jean Le Rond d'Alembert
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226134765
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot expresses the hopes, dogmas, assumptions, and prejudices that have come to characterize the French Enlightenment. In this preface to the Encyclopedia, d'Alembert traces the history of intellectual progress from the Renaissance to 1751. Including a revision of Diderot's Prospectus and a list of contributors to the Encyclopedia, this edition, elegantly translated and introduced by Professor Richard Schwab, is one of the great works of the Enlightenment and an outstanding introduction to the philosophes.

Diderot's Writings on the Theatre

Diderot's Writings on the Theatre PDF Author: Denis Diderot
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Theater
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description


A Source Book in Theatrical History

A Source Book in Theatrical History PDF Author: Alois Maria Nagler
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486205150
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 642

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Book Description
A rich resource for students of theater and theater historians, this volume features an annotated collection of more than 300 unusually interesting and detailed articles. Passages by contemporary observers from ancient Greece to modern times include notes on acting, directing, make-up, costuming, stage props, machinery, scene design, and much more.

The Function of the Dream and the Body in Diderot's Works

The Function of the Dream and the Body in Diderot's Works PDF Author: Jennifer Vanderheyden
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820458427
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
In addition to his philosophical works and innovative novels, the eighteenth-century writer Denis Diderot is most often recognized as one of the major authors of the Encyclopédie. Described by scholars as a modern and provocative thinker and writer, Diderot inspired intellectual discussion with his theories of artistic mimesis, in which he placed special emphasis on what is not stated in words, but is conveyed through gestures and other non-verbal methods of communication. This book explores Diderot's representation of the body as a tableau vivant - a literary painting in which the narrator portrays his characters as if suspended in a state of oscillation between paralysis and movement. The Function of the Dream and the Body in Diderot's Works discusses how Diderot's depiction of the body poses problems of interpretation for the serious reader/spectator, who, as in Freudian dream analysis, must generate a narrative based on a visual painting of the body's silent speech.