Edelstein, Dan. “Humanism, l’Esprit
Philosophique, and the Encyclopédie.” Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts, vol. 1, no. 1, 2009, https://arcade.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/article_pdfs/roflv01i01_Edelstein_072009_0.pdf.
The Encyclopédie has been considered by many to be a grand and revolutionary work full of new information, breaking strides towards the French Revolution of 1789. While this may be true, Edelstein claims that the Encyclopedists were not as “modern” as some claim and that they more often than not stuck to the past traditions of humanist erudition, so much so that it is tempting to call the Encyclopédie “the greatest book the seventeenth-century ever produced” (pg. 4, my emphasis). Through an analysis of citation strategies, Edelstein aims to demonstrate the Encyclopedists’ tendencies to quote and cite antiquity and d’Alembert’s in particular to encourage the study and appreciation of past works and to still value erudition. Due to Digital Humanities technology from the ARTFL Encyclopédie (University of Chicago), Edelstein is able to provide detailed statistics regarding the dates of sources quoted and fields of authority that occur in the Encyclopédie, with explanations. A final section discusses the problem of plagiarism or “extraction” in the Encyclopédie and the problems associated with it in regard to the study.
Basic Information
Country of Publication: United States
Language: English
Decade: 2009s
Main Classification: Humanism, Source Material
Related Sources
*In Progress*
Notes
None
Updates
7/9/2020: Created page.