McGinnis, Reginald. “The Abbé Mallet’s
Unsigned Contribution to the Encyclopédie.” Eighteenth Century Fiction, vol. 28, no. 4, UTP/Eighteenth Century Fiction, 2016, pp. 691–712. EBSCOhost, doi:10.3138/ecf.28.4.691.
McGinnis claims that the Abbé Mallet is one of the most important figures involved with the Encyclopédie and therefore it is necessary and worth the time to consider his authorship of unsigned articles in the Encyclopédie. Opening with an introduction to Mallet’s contribution to the Encyclopédie McGinnis explains the misconceptions with unsigned articles (e.g., Mallet’s signed articles decrease dramatically after his death, but not necessarily because of his death) as well as prior research on Mallet and his articles, of which little exists. McGinnis’s ultimate goal to attribute articles to Mallet that are marked as anonymous and to do so he creates a list of characteristics of his known articles that serve as predictors to find Mallet’s unsigned articles. These attributes include sources cited, or a “common network of references” (Tournely, de la Chambre, Joseph Bingham), stylistic similarities (occurrences of specific words and phrases, subject matter, general writing style), and the use of cross-references (where they lead to, which articles refer to certain others). All in all, McGinnis proposes 56 anonymous articles that are worth exploring and then proceeds to apply the above method to compare known articles with unknown. He breaks each anonymous entry down, discusses their notable features as well as any proposes possible explanations for those that don’t necessarily follow Mallet’s typical pattern. Ultimately, he provides a list of articles that, based on his analyses, can be definitely attributed to Mallet, contradicting a few previous claims and recommends further action, especially in regard to how scholars view Mallet’s contribution to the Encyclopédie.
Basic Information
Country of Publication: Canada
Language: English
Decade: 2010s
Main Classification: Authorship, Anonymous
Related Sources
*In Progress*
Notes
1. Quotes are kept in their original French.
Updates
4/6/2021: Created page.