Evidence, example, and expe'rience in the eighteenth-century French essay

尽管散文作为一种文学形式在18世纪的法国日益流行，但与其他写作形式相比，它受到的关注相对较少。虽然文章被广泛理解为一种与个人经验和自发的思想联想有关的实验性写作模式，但启蒙思想家如何使用这种形式来交流他们的思想还没有得到充分的探索。作家对散文的使用揭示了他们对散文形式及其含义的理解？与其他类型的证据相比，个人经验的价值是什么？有没有一种特定形式的证据最适合这篇文章？如果是的话，这揭示了作家的主张是什么？这个项目将考察启蒙思想家的作品，包括狄德罗、孟德斯鸠和卢梭，以评估这些作家如何利用这篇文章，并使用不同形式的证据来构建他们的论点，证实他们的主张，并创造出作者的形象。它旨在揭示法国作家对这篇文章及其认识论含义的理解方式，并思考这对这篇文章对被称为启蒙的写作的扩散的重要性意味着什么。狄德罗在《百科全书》中对经验、实验、经验的定义展示了18世纪法国经验、实验和文章术语的相互联系--往往是同义词。这篇文章与经验主义和实验科学的关系可以追溯到博伊尔和洛克的工作，蒙田和培根的影响也是有据可查的。虽然关于英国期刊散文传统的出现和现代散文形式的发展有广泛的学术研究，但最近的工作往往集中在19世纪的散文家身上。虽然这为文章的特点提供了有用的背景，但关于启蒙运动法国散文写作的策略、技巧和含义的研究仍然有限。本项目将调查主要启蒙运动思想家在散文中使用证据的情况，包括狄德罗的散文《克劳德和尼龙的散文》、孟德斯鸠的散文《苏黎世》和卢梭的散文《L的起源语言》。学者们最常将这些文章与作者更知名或更有影响力的作品联系起来，而不是以他们自己的权利来考察它们。因此，学术并不倾向于关注论文形式的重要性或这些作家如何使用证据来塑造和充实他们的论点。该项目将考虑不太知名的作品，如最近发现的L的散文，以评估女性作家是否以独特的方式使用文章形式，包括回应学术奖项竞争，并探索这些作家如何理解论文形式的要求和潜力。我的研究将以个人文章为案例，评估和比较这些文本中出现的不同形式的证据。我将研究历史例子、经验证据、个人经验或证词，以及轶事，以确定它们是如何使用的，以及产生了什么效果。这个项目将采取跨学科的视角，汇集关于启蒙思想家的文学、历史和哲学学术线索，以一种适当的方式关注他们作品中未被研究的方面，并将它们与那个时期鲜为人知的文章一起考虑。

Despite its increasing prevalence as a literary form in eighteenth-century France, the essay has received relatively little attention compared with other forms of writing. While the essay is widely understood as an experimental mode of writing concerned with personal experience and the spontaneous association of ideas, the ways in which Enlightenment thinkers employ this form to communicate their thought has not been sufficiently explored. What does a writer's use of the essai reveal about their understanding of the form and its implications? What is the value of individual experience compared with other types of evidence? Is there a particular form of evidence that is most suited to the essay and if so, what does this reveal about a writer's claims? This project will examine works by Enlightenment thinkers including Diderot, Montesquieu, and Rousseau to assess how these writers make use of the essay and employ different forms of evidence to construct their arguments, substantiate their assertions, and create an authorial persona. It aims to reveal the ways in which writers in France understood the essay and its epistemological implications and considers what this means for the essay's importance to the proliferation of writing known as the Enlightenment.Diderot's definition of 'Épreuve, Essai, Expérience' in the Encyclopédie demonstrates the interconnectedness - and often the synonymity - of the terminology of experience, experiment and the essai in eighteenth-century France. The essay's relationship to empiricism and experimental science has been traced to the work of Boyle and Locke and the influence of Montaigne and Bacon is well-documented. While there is extensive scholarship on the emergence of the British periodical essay tradition and the development of the essay in its modern form, recent work has tended to focus on nineteenth-century essayists. Although this provides useful context on the essay's characteristics, there remains limited research on the strategies, techniques, and implications of essay-writing in Enlightenment France.This project will investigate the use of evidence in essais by key Enlightenment thinkers, including Diderot's Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron, Montesquieu's Essai sur le goût, and Rousseau's Essai sur l'origine des langues. Scholars most often approach these essays in relation to the author's better-known or more influential works, rather than examining them in their own right. As a result, scholarship has not tended to focus on the significance of the essay form or the ways in which these writers use evidence to shape and substantiate their arguments.The project will consider lesser-known works such as Émilie du Châtelet's recently discovered Essai sur l'optique to assess whether women writers use the essay form in distinctive ways, including in response to academic prize contests, and to explore how these writers understood the requirements and potential of the essay form.My research will use individual essays as case studies to develop a thematic analysis that assesses and compares the different forms of evidence that appear in these texts. I will examine historical example, empirical evidence, personal experience or testimony, and anecdote to identify how they are used and to what effect. This project will take an interdisciplinary perspective by drawing together strands of literary, historical, and philosophical scholarship on Enlightenment thinkers in a way that gives due attention to an understudied aspect of their works and considers them alongside lesser-known essays of the period.