Lough, J. “The ‘Encyclopédie’ and the
Remonstrances of the Paris Parlement.” The Modern
Language Review, vol. 56, no. 3, Modern Humanities Research Association, 1961, pp. 393–95. JSTOR, JSTOR, doi:10.2307/3720271.
Here, Lough briefly describes a publishing trick pulled by Diderot and D’Alembert around 1753. In the errata of Volume III, the editors respond to the Journal de Trévoux’s criticisms of the ideas expressed in Authorité politique (from the previous Volume II). In this defense, they quote an arguably scandalous section from the Traité des droits de la Reine sur différens états de la monarchie d’Espagne, published in 1667. However, Lough notices that the Encyclopédie does not quote any other passage from the Traité, which contains sections that the Encyclopedists would likely have found useful and pertinent. Because of this, Lough claims that the editors did not take their quote from the Traité; instead, they copied the Parlement of Paris, whose judges had just returned from their exile from Paris. In the Parlement’s strong publicly published remonstrances, Lough finds the exact quote, down to an ellipsis and other specific punctuation, that Diderot and D’Alembert used in Volume III. Lough points out that this occurrence was special as the Encyclopedists used one of their enemies, the sovereign court of France, as a shield; in other words, if the Parlement could say it, then so could the Encyclopédie.
Basic Information
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Language: English
Decade: 1960s
Main Classification: Sedition, Parlement
Related Sources
*In Progress*
Notes
None
Updates
9/20/2020: Created page.