Rosenberg, Daniel. “An Eighteenth-
Century Time Machine: The ‘Encyclopedia’ of Denis Diderot.” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, vol. 25, no. 2, Berghahn Books, 1999, pp. 227–50. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41299144.
In this article on Diderot’s article “Encyclopédie”, Rosenberg takes a unique look at the Encyclopédie’s placement in time and history as well as the status of knowledge in time. He claims that while Diderot’s theories on the language of an encyclopedia are important, so are his ideas on the relations between the Encyclopédie, the past, and posterity. Calling the Encyclopédie a symbol of a newer, more intellectual time, Rosenberg discusses Diderot’s thoughts on the process of making the Encyclopédie useful to future generations by creating a universal, unchanging system of explanation and on the urgency of finishing the Encyclopédie before information became obsolete. Rosenberg then asks why Diderot chose to create an encyclopedia, discussing, from the article “Encyclopédie” once more, the stylistic and structural choices behind the Encyclopédie including the alphabetical (i.e. dictionary) order, genealogical tree, and cross-references.
Basic Information
Country of Publication: United States
Language: English
Decade: 1990s
Main Classification: Language, Time
Related Sources
*In Progress*
Notes
None
Updates
7/14/2020: Created page.