Rameau's nephew and D'Alembert's dream
| Title | Rameau's nephew and D'Alembert's dream |
|---|---|
| Original title | Le Neveu de Rameau ou La Satire seconde; Le Rêve de d'Alembert |
| Author | Denis Diderot; transl. w. introd. by Leonard Tancock |
| Publication | Penguin |
| Size | 237p |
| Language |  ENG |
| ISBN | 9780140441734 |
| Topics |
French fiction--Philosophical French fiction--Satirical French fiction--Translated into English French fiction--18th century French fiction--19th century |
| Notes | Rameau's Nephew is an imaginary philosophical conversation by Denis Diderot which was published in 1763. The recounted story takes place in the Palais-Royal, where Moi ("Me"), a narrator-like persona (often mistakenly supposed to stand for Diderot himself), describes for the reader a recent encounter he's had with the character Lui ("Him"), referring to — yet not literally meaning — Jean-François Rameau, the nephew of the famous composer, who's engaged him in an intricate battle of wits, self-reflexivity, allegory and allusion. Recurring themes in the discussion include the Querelle des Bouffons (the French/Italian opera battle), education of children, the nature of genius and money. The often rambling conversation pokes fun at numerous prominent figures of the time. In the prologue that precedes the conversation, the first-person narrator frames Lui as eccentric and extravagant, full of contradictions, "a mixture of the sublime and the base, of good sense and irrationality". Effectively being a provocateur, Lui seemingly extols the virtues of crime and theft, raising love of gold to the level of a religion. Moi appears initially to have a didactic role, while the nephew (Lui) succeeds in conveying a cynical, if perhaps immoral, vision of reality. Michel Foucault, in his Madness and Civilization, saw in the ridiculous figure of Rameau's nephew a kind of exemplar of a uniquely modern incarnation of the Buffoon. ===== D'Alembert’s Dream (French: Le Rêve de d'Alembert) is an ensemble of three philosophical dialogues authored by Denis Diderot in 1769, which first appeared in Grimm's Correspondance Littéraire in 1782, but was not published in its own right until 1830: Conversation between d’Alembert and Diderot D’Alembert’s Dream Continuation of the Conversation between d’Alembert and Diderot In this work, Diderot is at the zenith of his development of materialist theories. It is here that he introduces his theory on life and nature, indicating that matter is not fixed but that, on the contrary, subject to evolution. Each species in existence transforms itself and gives birth to a new species. He would later create a special version for his patroness, Catherine II of Russia, replacing the certain character names. Both Julie de Lespinasse and D’Alembert took poorly to being used as protagonists of the conversations. [wikipedia] |
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