Sheridan, Geraldine. “An Other Text:
Rationalist Iconography and the Representation of Women’s Work in the Encyclopédie.”
Diderot Studies, vol. 29, Librairie Droz, 2003, pp. 101–35. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40372863.
Claiming that women’s contributions to the Encyclopédie are under researched, Sheridan, who studies the roles of women in 18th century Europe, looks at the ways the plates can communicate ideas that the text cannot, especially in regard to the role of women. She notes that women are occasionally included in the plates, an anomaly as most dictionaries and encyclopedias in the 18th century contain images of only men or of no people at all. Sheridan makes several observations on this occurrence but notes that the Encyclopédie’s depictions are not indicative of a specific moment in time but instead demonstrate patterns and traditions over time and comments on the “aliveness” of women in the plates that was not always true to real conditions. Sheridan provides images and direct analysis of how women are portrayed in a range of traditional practices and notes how they differ from those which men belonged to. Also, she discusses how the roles of different genders in various practices often had a cultural aspect holding something that readers then would have understood and accepted in a way that modern scholars can only gain through research.
Basic Information
Country of Publication: Switzerland
Language: English
Decade: 2000s
Main Classification: Plates, Women
Related Sources
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Notes
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Updates
7/14/2020: Created page.