'The Philosophes' by Charles Palissot - cover image

Copyright

Jessica Goodman

Published On

2021-01-21

ISBN

Paperback978-1-78374-908-9
Hardback978-1-78374-909-6
PDF978-1-78374-910-2
HTML978-1-80064-612-4
XML978-1-78374-913-3
EPUB978-1-78374-911-9
MOBI978-1-78374-912-6

Language

  • English

Print Length

234 pages (viii+226)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 16 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.64" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 21 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.81" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback996g (35.13oz)
Hardback1383g (48.78oz)

Media

Illustrations3

OCLC Number

1266655131

LCCN

2020476625

BIC

  • HP
  • HPS
  • 2ADF

BISAC

  • LCO008000
  • PHI034000
  • PHI019000

LCC

  • PQ2019.P25

Keywords

  • Charles Palissot de Montenoy
  • Les Philosophes
  • comedy
  • play
  • critical apparatus
  • translation

'The Philosophes' by Charles Palissot

In 1760, the French playwright Charles Palissot de Montenoy wrote Les Philosophes – a scandalous farcical comedy about a group of opportunistic self-styled philosophers. Les Philosophes emerged in the charged historical context of the pamphlet wars surrounding the publication of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, and delivered an oblique but acerbic criticism of the intellectuals of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, including the likes of Diderot and Rousseau.

This book presents the first high-quality English translation of the play, including critical apparatus. The translation is based on Olivier Ferret’s edition, and renders the text into iambic pentameter to preserve the character of the original. Adaptations are further provided of Ferret’s introduction and notes.

This masterful and highly accessible translation of Les Philosophes opens up this polemical text to a non-specialist audience. It will be a valuable resource to non-Francophone scholars and students working on the philosophical exchanges of the Enlightenment.

Moreover, this translation – the result of a year-long project undertaken by Jessica Goodman with six of her undergraduate French students – expounds the value of collaboration between scholar and student, and, as such, provides a model for other language tutors embarking on translation projects with their students.

Reviews

The text includes the letter that Palissot published as a preface to the play, along with translations of the critical notes that Voltaire added to that preface when he republished it, and the translation is followed by the full French texts of both the play and this preface. All in all, this is an interesting and useful publication, and a steal at the online price of nothing at all.

Derek Connon

Modern Language Review, vol. 117, no. 1, 2022.

Contents

Endnotes

(pp. 209–218)
  • Jessica Jessica
  • Olivier Ferret

Introduction

(pp. 1–25)
  • Olivier Ferret
  • Jessica Goodman

Contributors

Jessica Goodman

(editor)
Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow in French at University of Oxford

Olivier Ferret

(editor)