Disenchantment and Re-enchantment: Rhetorical Tension in the Siècle des Lumières

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY

Sean P. Killackey

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Daniel Brewer

DECEMBER 2020 © Sean P. Killackey, 2020

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank the members of my committee, without whom none of this project would have seen the light of day. I am deeply grateful to Dan Brewer, Juliette Cherbuliez, Mary Franklin-Brown, and Michael Gaudio for their commitment and perseverance in seeing this dissertation project through to its completion. Before this dissertation even took shape, their courses and scholarship inspired new avenues of intellectual pursuit for me. I am particularly grateful for the many conversations at workshops, in offices and hallways, and after myriad speaker events with each of them during the development of ideas that would eventually coalesce into a dissertation project.

I would like to express my deep and enduring gratitude to my advisor, Daniel Brewer, who read countless revisions with patience and tirelessly gave diplomatic and insightful feedback, challenging my assumptions and posing questions that lead me to more fruitful exploration and stronger writing. His intellectual guidance for this project over the long duration is a testament to his perseverance and his passion for critical inquiry into the literature and culture of the eighteenth century.

I sincerely thank Juliette Cherbuliez for chairing my committee and for her advice on the ac a a . Hr brilliant and challenging questions impacted my thinking on this project, perhaps more than she even knows. I am grateful to her for her mentorship both in scholarly pursuits and in teaching.

My long-distance thanks go to Mary Franklin-Brown who began this project with me at the U Ma a a C C a Cambridge in England. From allegorical thinking in the Roman de la Rose to the finer points of Fca , Ma a ac a invaluable and a bulwark against discouragement.

From his leadership role in the Theorizing Early Modern Studies group to his course on early modern print culture and work on my committee, Michael Gaudio helped me to see interdisciplinary connections and discover the delights of engraved illustration in eighteenth-

i century texts. This eventually led me to my fascination with Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint- P ccaed relationship with illustration, type face, and his printer-publisher (and future father-in-law!).

Certainly, this dissertation project did not proceed without the help of a great many people and institutions. I would like to thank the Department of French and Italian at the University of Minnesota for the generous financial support during my doctoral studies, and in particular for the two summer Doctoral Research Fellowship awards which funded undivided time to work on the dissertation.

My life and work have been enriched by the many wonderful friends and colleagues I have met in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Minnesota. My faculty colleagues at St. Olaf College have been a source of enthusiastic support beyond what I could have imagined.

I would be remiss if I did not mention my debt of gratitude to the University Club of St. Paul for providing the perfect, convivial, and inspiring place to write. John Rupp and Stephanie Laitala- Rupp have reason to be proud of the professional staff they have put in place to run the historic property and create a space of great conversation, fine food, and a love of higher education. For keeping the caffeine flowing and the fireplace glowing, my thanks to Sue Katsiotis, Kelli McDonald, as well as Deb, Evan, Gerardo, Jacquie, Lindsey, Liz, and Paul.

My final and deepest expression of gratitude is for my family. For my daughter, Brianne, who a a a a a and yet who always encouraged me and lovingly put adorable signs on the door of my home office, b a a bac. For my extended family who put up with me disappearing for hours during holidays and vacations to write. Finally, though I speak multiple languages, I do not have the right words to adequately express my appreciation for my wife in this matter. Ellie was the one who encouraged me to complete my doctorate when I thought it was an unfeasible dream, sharing that it was her dream for our life together too. Her unwavering support was the only thing at times that allowed me to ford raging rivers of doubt. None of this would have been possible, or hold as much joy, without her. I am eternally grateful and look forward to the next chapters in our enchanting adventure together.

ii

Dedication

This dissertation is dedicated to my father, John Killackey, who inspired in me a love of reading and sailing, and who taught me that the grandest adventure is a life filled by discovery, imagination, and reflection.

iii

Table of contents

Acknowledgements i

Dedication iii

Table of Contents iv

List of Figures v

Introduction Disenchantment and Re-enchantment: Rhetorical Tension in the Siècle des Lumières 1

Chapter One Tabling the Matter: The Problem of Nature Made into a Conceptual Object 24

Chapter Two Pastoral novel as re-draft of encyclopedic project: Paul et Virginie as conclusion to Bernardin de Saint-P a a 90

Chapter Three History of the Two Indies: a Singular Tale with Multiple Voices History and Philosophy Collide in the Histoire des deux Indes 174

Conclusion Disenchantment and Re-enchantment: Rhetorical Tension in the Siècle des Lumières 243

Bibliography 267

iv

List of figures

Fig. 1: Da c D a Ab Encyclopédie. Design by Charles-Nicolas Cochin, Engraving by Bonaventure-Louis Prévost, 1772. Bibliothèque nationale de France...... 1

Fig. 1.1 and 1.2: Side by side view of table of contents pages for Buf a Dabs contributions to Tome 4 of the Histoire naturelle, 4:iiiiv, 1753...... 24, 64

Fig. 1.3: Ea Dab ab caa aa a (HN 5:30) ..... 67

Fig. 1.4: Engraved illustration of the Horse (HN 4:366). Design by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Engraving by Jean-Charles Baquoy, 1753. Bibliothèque nationale de France ...... 80

Fig. 1.5: Ea a S L L Nouvelle maison rustique, 1749, Bibliothèque nationale de France ...... 85

Fig. 2.1: First page of Paul et Virginie, appearing in Tome 4 of the Études de la nature, 1788 ...... 108

Fig. 2.2: Ea H 1773 Voyage à l'île de France. Design by Jean-Michel Moreau le jeune, Engraving by Louis-Joseph Masquelier...... 133

Fig. 2.3: Ea Naa V 1806 Paul et Virginie. Design by Pierre -Pa P, Ea b Ba J Fca R. .. 155

Fig. 2.4: Ea Pa V 1789 edition of Paul et Virginie. Design by Jean-Michel Moreau le jeune, Engraving by Abraham Girardet ...... 161

Fig. 2.5: Ea Eac Pa V 1806 edition of Paul et Virginie. Design by Lafitte, Engraving by Bourgeois de la Richardière...... 164

Fig. 3.1: Data visualization of the Introduction to the Histoire des deux Indes, showing textual revisions over the three main editions from 1770, 1774, and 1780. Visualising Raynal Project, ed. Glenn Roe...... 206

Fig. 3.2: Engraving Baac Fa aa Caaa Fa from frontispiece of Tome 4, Histoire des deux Indes (1780). Design by Jean-Michel Moreau le jeune, Engraving by Jean Baptiste Blaise Simonet...... 223

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Introduction Disenchantment and Re-enchantment: Rhetorical Tension in the Siècle des Lumières

Little by little, science has stretched its tentacles into more and more corners formerly occupied by religion and myth. It has removed the persuasion that there is something beyond what is offered by the evidence of our senses; it has uprooted the conviction that things are what they are, and where they are, for a reason; it has eradicated mystery, order, and purpose and in their place, it has put nothing at all, simply leaving a gaping void.1

Figure 1: Bonaventure Louis-Prévost and Charles-Nicholas Cochin, frontispiece (detail), in Diderot and dAlemberts Encyclopédie, 1772, engraving, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Figred in the frontispiece to Diderot and dAlemberts Encyclopédie, Trth is staged beteen the opposite actions of Reason and Imagination. Reason first strips off the eil from Trth, and then Imagination re-adorns and crons her. Figral and

1 Joshua Landy and Michael T. Saler, The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009) 102103. 1 discrsie elements intermingle to point to meanings beond hat langage in its literal fnction alone can epress.2 The reading sbjectiit fashioned b the tet challenges epistemological positions throgh the resoltion of rhetorical tensions ia figral thinking.3 Comple oppositions sch as Trth and Imagination abond in the riting of the French eighteenth centr, notabl beteen pairs sch as sstem and sentiment, intellect and affect, or philosoph and politics, to name bt a fe. The dialoge beteen opposing binaries opens a space for conceiing of a trth somehere beteen the poles.

And concern for establishing the trth is a hallmark of the Enlightenment, or the siècle des Lumières as it as referred to in eighteenth-centr France. Dring an era hen old trths ere constantl being challenged b ne discoeries, the tilit of knoledge to control and master the phsical orld led man to attempt to separate savoir from its spernatral fondations in diine athorit, sperstition, and mthical tales. Hoeer, the search for reliable natral trths did not end ith Reason stripping the eil

Imagination has a role to pla in order to make trth palatable.

I arge that e can read man orks of the siècle des Lumières in a ne light

hen e attend to the strctring role of tension beteen binar opposites fond in man of these orks. Rather than resoling into a dialectic snthesis (some of A, bt some of

B also), these orks create a comple interpretation throgh the sbjects eperience of

2 For more on figural thinking, see Norman Bryson, Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Régime (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and Jean-François Lyotard, Discourse, Figure, trans. Mary Lydon and Antony Hudek, Cultural Critique Books (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). 3 On the concept of subjectivity created by the text, see Roland Barthes, Le plaisir du texte, Points. Littérature 135 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1983).

2 the space between the opposites (not A nor B, bt something nderstood to lie beteen).

I frther sggest that these orks also initiate their readers into ne ways of thinking ia these strctres. As Diderot claimed for the Encyclopédie (1751-1772), the might jst

change the common manner of thinking.4 This attempt at transformation commences

ith discarding metaphsical eplanations in faor of empirical materialist eplanations.

Hoeer, the process does not end there, for bereft of a strctring axis mundi proided b the former epistemological frameork, here does one find contet and meaning?

Reflecting on this qestion at the trn of the tentieth centr, German sociologist Ma Weber decried the loss of meaning and organiing strctre in the modern orld; The fate of or times is characteried b rationaliation and intellectaliation and, aboe all, b the disenchantment of the orld [die Entzauberung der Welt].5 Later critics old pick p on Webers concept and se the term

disenchantment to describe more generall the processes at ork to remoe the transcendental from the modern episteme. The concept of disenchantment has been elaborated most recentl in the ork of Josha Land, Michael Saler, and Dan Edelstein,

hose stdies e ill discss in greater detail in the folloing chapters.6

4 In French, changer la faon commne de penser. See Diderots article Encclopdie for an elaboration of the method and aims of the Encyclopédie. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond dAlembert, Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société de gens de lettres, 28 vols. (Paris and Neufchâtel: Briasson, 1751-1772), 5:642. 5 Ma Webers lectre Wissenschaft als Berft as gien at Mnich Uniersit, Germany, in 1918, later published in Gesammlte Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tubingen: Duncker & Humblodt, 1922). See also Damion Searls nanced fresh translation in Max Weber, Charisma and Disenchantment: The Vocation Lectures, ed. Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon, trans. Damion Searls (New York: New York Review Books, 2020). 6 Dan Edelstein, ed., The Super-Enlightenment: Daring to Know Too Much 3 To define this pair of oppositional concepts, e can state that disenchantment refers to the process of stripping aa referentialit to transcendent or spernatral schemas in description and eplanation of the material orld. Re-enchantment refers to a conter-process hereb knoledge that has been disenchanted is imbed ith ne contet ia processes that rel on a sort of seclar enchantment sch as the poetic poer of figratie langage. Where disenchantment shears aa the old athorities pon

hich knoledge as gronded, re-enchantment attempts to hmanie, contetalie, and organie knoledge in as that do not depend on faith or the metaphsical.

I arge that one mode of this epistemological critiqe is performed in eighteenth- centr tets throgh an elicited eperience of figral thinking. Generall, figral and literal are held in strict opposition, hoeer or nderstanding of this concept ma be prodctiel complicated b one reading of Jean-Franois Lotard. Lotard sggests a co-presence of the figral and discrsie.7 For Lotard, one is not the opposite of the other, bt the are different sstems of representation. Hoeer, each reqires the other in order for representation to occr. The are inetricabl linked and heterogenos. The figral is that hich cannot be literall signified and comes from the image, hich itself refers to something in the material orld. The figral is isal at its essence, ths inoles the affect hile discorse is the domain of the intellect. Together the nite affect and the intellect. For Lotard, discorse gestres toard the figral, creating its meaning again each time in the present of the moment of interpretation.

(Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2010) and Landy and Saler, The Re-enchantment of the World. 7 Lyotard, Discourse, Figure. 4 This strctring concept of discorse and figre can be made een more prodctie for s b considering Norman Brsons added dimension of interpretie trth.

In Brsons analsis, the discrsie and the figral eist on a sort of continm along

hich can be plotted the degree of persasieness of the trth of the image.8 Brson arges that the more discrsie elements of an image engage more directl in narratie to be interpreted as intentional epression of the artist to cone a point. This is regarded

ith some degree of skepticism b the ieing sbject according to Brson. Hoeer, the elements of image that are less lingisticall commnicatie are said to be figratie, and ths treated as less contried and interpreted as more likel tre in some sense b the ieer. Brsons continm from discrsie to figral cones a priileged stats on the figral since it is not interpreted b the intellectall skeptical tools of langage. The figral is a trth sggested rather than one that is eplicitl narrated. This model contribtes to important ales for m std. The first is the mapping of a

ieer/readers more accepting interpretation to the figral side of the spectrm, and the second is similar to Lotards argment that this seen/eperienced kind of sign lies beond the scope of literal discorse to epress it.

For m std, the figral is necessar to inoke a kind of thinking otside the realm of literal langage, something that can be nderstood bt not directl epressed.

This figral thinking is inoked both throgh the ritten and the isal. In or tets, the

isal takes man forms; it is engraed image, it is data tables, it is the phsical manifestation of tet and printers ornament on the page, and it is the

8 See Chapter 1 Discorse, figre in Brson, Word and Image. 5 emotional/sentimental/moral eperience created throgh the poetics of paired incompatible rhetorical modes. The tet creates its on sbject ho performs an interpretie moe to comprehend the figral pointed to b the heterogenos discorses and between the discorses.

The figral signifié created b the opposition beteen disenchantment and re- enchantment constittes the heart of this dissertation.9 One sign of ho crciall rich this opposition is for or nderstanding of seeral Enlightenment tets (those e focs on here, and others) is seen in the nmber of other oppositions it generates. Man of the binar opposites at ork in the tets of the siècle des Lumières reeal strctres of and disrptions in epistemolog hen eamined throgh this lens of disenchantment and re- enchantment. Some of the important eighteenth-centr oppositions that this enchantment frameork sggests and complicates inclde reason and imagination, sstem and sentiment, intellect and affect, description and narration, libert and constraint, critiqe and creation, or een histor and philosoph. B an eamination of sch tensions, e ill sho ho the approach elaborated in this dissertation can be applied to render legible the potential for epistemic disrption in tets.

What I am sggesting is that this rhetorical tension is an eighteenth-centr literar deice. Perhaps e shold call it the poetics of enchantment. This jtaposition

9 I am referring here to the concept of semiotics as conceptualized by Ferdinand de Sassre herein langage is made p of signs that consist of a dad signifiant (signifier the ord) and signifié (that which is signified the meaning), and each side of the pair participates in its own network of associations both accidental and designed. Importantly, this highlights a realm of meaning that exists only through the act of interpretation and is subject to change as a dominant episteme changes. See Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. Perry Meisel and Haun Saussy, trans. Wade Baskin (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 6 of not jst terms bt modes of epression, or een modes of thinking that are at odds ith each other fnctions to break fied conceptions and re-create an epistemic sbject position gronded in empirical trth and embellished ith hmanit

Throghot this std e ill eplore ho different athors soght to contest and establish knoledge. In the mid-eighteenth centr, Bffon and Dabenton rite the

Histoire naturelle in a manner to change ho the collectie knoledge of the material

orld is recorded. The reject the compilation of preiosl collected knoledge of the natral orld (an approach hich as accepted as a iable model b other contemporar natral historians sch as Lois Liger or Nol-Antoine Plche). Instead, Bffon and

Dabenton insist on knoledge based not on erdition, bt rather on indiidal eperience.

In this the are part of a cltral histor of eperimentation in the as to rite abot knowing. Alread in 1637 in the Discours de la méthode, Descartes sets don in

riting his sre and certain method of inqir into not jst knoledge, bt the poetics of knoing the langage and figres sefl for representing knoledge and the a one knos the orld. Descartes diides eperience into to spheres, the internal realm of thoght and the eternal realm of sensor obseration. The claim I think therefore I am sets the stage for the tension beteen the sensor (or figral) and the discrsie.10

Descartes priorities discrsie self-aareness as the least fallible form of knoledge,

hile sensor impression he deems ssceptible to tricker or inaccrac.

10 The expression sometimes referred to as the cogito was first written in French, Je pense, donc je suis and is fond in the first paragraph of Part IV in René Descartes, Discours de la méthode (1637), ed. Maurice Dorolle (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1934). 7 English philosopher John Locke set aside Descartes mistrst of perception and his argment for representation of knoledge throgh langages tools of ords and categories to focs instead on the role of figral thinking in creating or knoledge. In this passage from Book 2 of Lockes Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689),

e see Lockes epistemological model of hman cognition.

Let s sppose the Mind to be, as e sa, hite Paper, oid of all Characters, ithot an Ideas; Ho comes it to be frnished? When comes it b that ast store, hich the bs and bondless Fanc of Man has painted on it, ith an almost endless ariet? Whence has it all the materials of Reason and Knoledge? To this I anser, in one ord, From Experience: In that, all or Knoledge is fonded; and from that it ltimatel deries it self. Or Obseration emplod either abot external, sensible Objects; or about the internal Operations of our Minds, perceived and reflected on by our selves, is that, which supplies our Understandings with all the materials of thinking. These to are the Fontains of Knoledge, from hence all the Ideas e hae, or can natrall hae, do spring.11

Locke represents the mind as a metaphorical space of representation, that is to sa, as paper pon hich ill be printed and painted characters and ideas. This paper is not represented ith limits; it is not a book or pamphlet. Its form is left to the imagination, bt the paper is said to hold a ast store in almost endless ariet hich is printed and painted on the paper b the bs and bondless Fanc of Man. The clean planar srface of the paper accepts the marks that are ast, almost endless, in qantit and posed b an actiit that is bondless. The are not random marks, bt are meant to store, represent, and present for later retrieal signs that are intelligible again.

There is a back and forth beteen thinking, perception, and storage. Lockes

11 John Locke and P. H Nidditch, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), Book 2, Chapter 1, Section 2. 8 epistemological analog emplos a metaphor of paper hich both describes intellection and creates representational models of it that the mind can emplo to frther its on contemplation of reason and knoledge. Figratie riting that creates cognitie models of hman intellection is an important concept that e ill reisit ithin this dissertation.

Locke treats thoght as a representational model, ith processes and material spport referring to the figre of the printed page and all the associations linked to it.

The particlar sbstrate he chooses for mental process is that of paper, giing the page, and, b etension the book, a primar place in this model. If the mind can be thoght of as operations on paper, cold not perhaps operations on paper imitate or amplif the operations of the mind? Locke does not prse this path of inqir in his essa, bt the eighteenth-centr natral historian Bffon echoes that representational model in his introdctor discorse to the Histoire naturelle. Bffons tet highlights the minds operations on the mental material, ith a ariet of poerfl phsical maniplations eerted on the obserations stored in the mind. These representational models sered to critiqe and reinent epistemological norms, as e shall see in Chapter 1.

With Descartes, the Pandoras bo of skepticism and qestioning had been opened, and the folloing Age of Enlightenment old not see it sht. The net generations old gro p in a France that as constantl confronted ith trael acconts of ne lands, peoples, plants, animals, goods and practices broght b the epanding eighteenth-centr maritime trael of empire, commerce, and discoer.12 If a

12 To ecellent stdies on the reception of Descartes are Erica Harths Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1992), and Aram Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes: A Study of Scientific Naturalism in the Enlightenment (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 9 methodical approach cold offer the promise of firm footing for knoledge, this opportnit as not lost on the philosophes and savants of the eighteenth centr. A critical preoccpation ith finding the basis for knoing nderlies the ke knoledge projects of the French Enlightenment. An empirical rational nderstanding of this profsion of ne specimens from the Ne World made a difference in being able to capitalie on mercantile and militar ndertakings.

The riters and thinkers ho ndertook to assemble, organie, and indeed prodce knoledge of the ne in relation to the eisting engaged in this self-reflection on ho knoledge cold be certain and the best a to represent it. Eighteenth-centr knoledge orkers soght to shear aa the ncertain transcendental throgh organiing schemes, or to trim the tree of knoledge as Robert Darnton pts it.13 If preios

ritings on a specimen of natre had inclded spernatral, diine, mstical, or mthological references (from the natral diinit and mths in Plin the Elders Natural

History to the Biblical ontolog gronding Antoine-Nol Plches Spectacle de la

Nature) those old no be set aside as belonging to the other, ntestable side of the bod-mind diide. These riters old disenchant their obserations to rel onl on

hat cold be seen, heard, felt, and qalified throgh eperiment. Far from remoing all qestion abot the absolte trth of these obserations, the admitted room for the sstematic inqir into these reslts and obserations to improe them in a sstematic and repeatable a. This shifted the space of qestioning to the phsical, tangible orld

1953). 13 Robert Darnton Philosophers Trim the Tree of Knoledge in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984, revised 2009). 10 and left metaphsical qestions aside for others, ths for all prposes qietl disqalifing them.

Problematic for the eighteenth-centr savants, discarding all metaphsical qestions also sheared aa some of the spports for knoledge. Hman beings rel on organiing strctres to makes sense of information. We obsere or create relations beteen hat e alread kno and ne knoledge.14 These cognitie strctres inde the ide breadth of the total hman eperience of the orld arond s, inclding the transcendental, the diine, the sblime, and the beatifl. Completel discarding these transcendental aspects leaes a oid in the strctres into hich ne knoledge ma be assimilated. It is m argment that eighteenth-centr knoledge riters, sch as the athors of the Histoire naturelle, the Études de la nature, and the Histoire des deux Indes attended to this potential oid in a particlar manner. I posit that the prodced knoledge b creating a poetics of epistemological disrption as the soght to fill the

oid b re-contetaliing knoledge hile the ere instrmentaliing it.

The research in this std has particlar ale toda becase eighteenth-centr tets and thinking are once again at the center of crcial conersations as modern democracies confront challenges to their fonding principles. Toda the challenges of poplarism, nationalism, illiberal polic, irrationalit, and the eperience of liing in a

post-trth cltre strain the social fabric of man nations arond the orld. Western democracies re-eamine the principles ithin their fonding docments like constittions, declarations of rights, and original las to recall into clarit the ales and

14 David Paul Ausubel, The Acquisition and Retention of Knowledge: A Cognitive View (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011). 11 ideals pon hich the nation is said to hae been bilt. As ith the United States and

France, man of these docments ere ritten in the eighteenth centr in the midst of great change and national self-definition. National conersations call into qestion long- held assmptions abot libert, citienship, the scope and role of goernment, the strctres that reglate the distribtion of ealth and poer, the concepts of eqalit and hmanit, and the dnamic beteen religion and intellectal freedom. These concerns also defined social and intellectal life in the eighteenth centr as ell.

Understanding the meaning of the eighteenth-centr docments herein man of these principles ere elaborated reqires s to nderstand the leicon of the era, the intellectal and philosophical contet in hich these tets ere ritten, and the as in

hich the er manner of thinking in the premodern Western orld differs from a modern episteme. Rather than solel focs on political tets, this std seeks to elaborate a method applicable to an eighteenth-centr tet here a particlar form of hat e might call episto-poetics is obsered.

What m research brings is an aareness of the three-dimensional natre of

French Enlightenment riting. One ma think of Enlightenment in er basic terms as both a mlti-alent cltral project and an era characteried b the critiqe of traditional athorit and orldie that as based on religios or transcendent beliefs. We begin this dissertation analing tets that eplicitl inole knoledge ork here e ill see efforts to displace the reliance on spernatral eplanations and phenomena in faor of reling on eplanations of the cosmos dran eclsiel from empirical eidence. These

orks srprisingl contain a rhetorical mode that seeks to create a seclarl transcendent perspectie on the contet for this knoledge hile at the same time containing a

12 rhetorical mode to emphasie eidence and discredit transcendent bases for knoledge.

This opposition creates a prodctie tension. The different rhetorical modes gestre at a radicall different nderstanding of the orld, not simpl a reised and pdated store of information abot the orld hich fits neatl into pre-eisting frameorks. The presented knoledge is paired ith a a to perceie it, nderstand it, and gie shape to a different a of comprehending. This a of comprehending is not gien eplicitl bt is gestred to. It is presented as an experience of the tet, otside of hat literal langage can epress. Therefore, one mst read beteen the lines. The knoledge mst be read, interpreted and eperienced as ling somehere beteen the poles of opposition and neer completel epressed b either. The nderstanding of the orld offered b the interpretie trajector of the tets in this std is something that mst be created in the mental process of representation to self. It mst be instantiated b cognitie interpretation to be assembled and framed in the mind of the reading sbject.

Beond the application to tets that are eplicitl knoledge projects, e can obsere this same dnamic in tets otside of hat a modern reader old consider

scientific. M research points to as in hich the same rhetorical tension of

Enlightenment is obsered in narratie fiction as ell. The effort to rite a better ftre for hmankind did not stop ith natral histor or encclopedias. The eoling shape of narratie fiction in the eighteenth centr from trael acconts to noels and contes philosophiques also shos the signs of epistemic shift throgh rhetorical tension.

Work on the noel has broght to or attention the as that eperimentation ith long- form fiction broght changes to the tpe of sbjectiit created b tets as ell as

13 probing the relationship beteen trth and illsion.15 With this crrent std, I ish to shift the approach aa from an epistemolog of long-form fiction genres toard episto- poetics, or ho langage is being re-thoght and the limits of cognition are being eperimented.

For an eample of epistemic disrption engendered b rhetorical tension in the noel, e can consider the passages in Rosseas La Nouvelle Hlose here the garden and gronds are transformed b Jlie. In her landscape renoation, hat as agréable is replaced b its opposite that hich is utile, and the floerbed becomes a kitchen garden. Parallel to this botanical transformation, the reader is inited on a similar renoation of affect ia the character of St. Pre ho isits these locations and finds his passions tamed and re-channeled toard bilding commnit. This dissertation is an eploration of ho e ma find fritfl aenes of interpretation for the riting of the

French siècle des Lumières throgh the rhetorical dnamics of paired disenchantment and re-enchantment.

In the chapters of this project, e ill eamine seeral case stdies to eplore the binar oppositions that animate forms of epistemological change ithin the tets. A poerfl tool emploed in each of the orks in or std (and one of the criteria for their inclsion in this std) is the se of illstrations to complete the tet. In each case, engraed illstrations ork in tandem ith the printed tet, strongl inoking the isal-

15 See for example Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel, 1600- 1740, 15th anniversary ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); and Vivienne Mylne, The Eighteenth-Century French Novel: Techniques of Illusion, 2nd ed. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and Nicholas D. Paige, Before Fiction: The Ancien Régime of the Novel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).

14 figral as an essential part of the ork. The role of the images in these orks can be

nderstood as a a of emploing figral thinking to eperiment ith the limits of cognitie thoght. The images etend the tetal strategies b offering the

ieing/reading sbject an eperience that challenges preios conceptions. Therefore, it is essential that e anale these images and their role in the poetics of the epistemic disrption ith or analsis of the tet.

Speaking to the poer of the image to engage the mind of the reader/ieer, John

Bender and Michael Marrinan assert that diagrams are a special case of images that commnicate the eperience of ho something orks. Their conceptaliation of diagram offers a rich and prodctie a to eplore the inter-relations beteen literal discorse and the figral. For Bender and Marrinan, the diagram bridges the gap beteen figre and discorse. The diagram is not onl an image that often contains eplicitl discrsie elements sch as description, captions, and labels; it is also a isal hich seeks to represent a particlarl hman-centered point of ie of the object. In this it is not so mch a representation of a thing as it is a thing itself: It is a thinking tool.16 If e consider the distribted cognition featres of illstrations in tets ith informational or edcational prposes, e can anale ho the illstrations both spport and transform mental processes, and ltimatel ho the participate in the project of epistemic transformation.

Or three principal case-std tets, like man from the eighteenth centr, pose a problem of categoriation (of genre and discipline) for modern scholarship (Paul et

16 See particularly this section in John B. Bender and Michael Marrinan, The Culture of Diagram (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010), 1923. 15 Virginie as a part of Études de la nature, Histoire naturelle, and Histoire des deux Indes).

A tets genre is sed to establish eclsie categories and determine ho one approaches reading a particlar ork. The genre determines hich interpretie tools are best sited for comprehension of the tet. One old not read a scholarl book on

oolog and epect the same tpe of reading eperience as hen one reads a noel.

Indeed, fiction old be anathema to the scientific endeaor nder or crrent episteme.

Hoeer, these generic distinctions did not eist in the same a in eighteenth-centr

France. One etreme eample of this is hen Diderots protagonist describes celllar strctre and microbiolog in the fictitios and risq conersation beteen dAlemberts mistress and his doctor at the sick mans bedside in Le rêve de d’Alembert.17 Astride the modern conceptal bondar beteen fiction and non-fiction, the case-std tets in this dissertation point to an earl modern paradigmatic space that preceded the disciplinar diide abot hich C.P. Sno rote in his 1959 essa The To Cltres.18 Sno lamented the loss of appreciation for the fll breadth and scope of hman nderstanding if those ho prse science esche Shakespeare and ice ersa.

The tets that this dissertation project comprises do not represent all aspects of eighteenth-centr cltre, bt the point to the broader scope of cltral prodction dring this period. Each chapter here presents a case std to eamine a different aspect of this critical isse. From natral histories to noels and ekphrastic essas, the corps contains some of the most idel-read and inflential orks of the eighteenth centr

17 Denis Diderot, Œuvres philosophiques, ed. Paul Vernière, Classiques Garnier (Paris: Bordas, 1990). 18 Charles Pearcy Snow, The Two Cultures (1959), ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 16 sch as Bffon and Dabentons Histoire naturelle, Bernardin de Saint-Pierres Paul et

Virginie, Abb Ranal (and Diderots) Histoire des deux Indes, and Rosseas La

Nouvelle Héloïse.19 Let s no take a brief oerie of the contents and critical qestions of the three chapters of this dissertation to proide a mental map for the road ahead.

Chapter 1 Buffon and Daubenton Write the Histoire naturelle What are e to make of orks hose aim is scientific and comprise components

ith strong literar qalit sch as Bffon and Dabentons Histoire naturelle?20

Approaching the Histoire naturelle as prel a scientific ork inadeqatel acconts for the figratie langage at ork in the descriptions; et to approach it as solel a ork of literatre ill not reeal the impact of the athors ork in natral histor hich e

old no call science. The interpretie approach one chooses has an impact on the

a one reads the tet and hat one priorities oer hat one filters ot. In reading the

Histoire naturelle from a modern scientific ie, ho does one take the literar elements

(narratie, figral langage, instances of personal sbjectie oice) into accont? It cold be arged that those passages are merel literar ornamentation, and ma be, indeed must be, disregarded. The hermenetic filter frames hat is the ork and hat is the parergon, that is, hat is associated ith bt otside the principal ork. Tets ritten prior to or modern episteme are onl partiall read hen read throgh an interpretie

19 For data-based insights on book sales in eighteenth-century France, see this digital humanities project, Simon Burrows et. al., The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe Project, 1769-1794 (http://fbtee.uws.edu.au/stn/, 6 May 2014). 20 Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon and Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière avec la description du Cabinet du roi., 36 vols. (Paris: De lImprimerie roale, 1749-1789). 17 frame based on a modern concept of specialiation and diision of fields of knoledge, particlarl those tets hose objectie is to prodce or delier knoledge.

The discrsie polarit science-literatre has alread been discssed at length b others. Wilda Anderson arges for a break ith preios analsis of the scientific orth of eighteenth-centr chemistr riting b instead focsing on the se of rhetoric and literar deices in those tets as ell as the self-conscios efforts of Antoine Laoisier and Pierre-Joseph Macqer to determine ho langage shold be sed to describe elements and eperiments.21 Anne Vila anales the inter-porosit beteen

Enlightenment medical and literar tets throgh the lens of sensibilité as a term designating emotional states and a philosophical constrct at the heart of polemical debates abot edcation, moralit, and societ.22 Vila criticall locates this interpla beteen science and literatre in the bod ith a focs on patholog and stdies of controlling or eciting the bods responses to stimls. Jessica Riskin foregronds the often-obscred role emotion plaed in eighteenth-centr empiricism, here sentiment

as a legitimate factor in scientific inestigation.23 These stdies ere each path- breaking in their moment, signaling important shifts in disciplinar direction and interpretie paradigms. The hae in common that the focsed primaril on scientific tets here the intrsion of literar or sentimental elements hae eposed a porosit

21 Wilda Anderson, Between the Library and the Laboratory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984). 22 Anne Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology: Sensibility in the Literature and Medicine of Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). 23 Jessica Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 18 nepected b the modern reader.

The aim of Chapter 1 is to introdce the parallel processes of disenchantment and re-enchantment in the contet of cataloging the material orld, and to anale specific passages that do literar ork, that is, that emplo figratie langage to a greater etent for prposes beond the simple transfer of information. Informed b the ork of Joanna

Stalnaker (Unfinished Enlightenment), Ma Weber (Science as a Vocation), and Josha

Land (The Re-enchantment of the World), this chapter maps ot the stakes of m project, positing an nder-eplored role of opposing binaries to create a poetics of epistemological disrption ithin hich to strctre knoledge of the natral orld. In this chapter, I arge that the riting of this period can be prodctiel eplored throgh the lens of the joint fnctioning of opposing processes hich I ill relate to the concepts of disenchantment and re-enchantment.

The conflicts that arose beteen Bffon and Dabenton hile riting the Histoire naturelle reeal some of the tensions in the intellectal commnit of the time abot the

a to approach categoriing and describing the natral orld. The rift between the two savants centered on the question of the most appropriate way to represent the natural object of their studies for the pages of the Histoire naturelle. Daubenton favored systematic tables of measurements, while Buffon accorded the more important role to narrative description.24 Joanna Stalnaker has sggested e might nderstand this conflict differentl as she eamines the Histoire naturelle to probe the polarit beteen to

24 Pal Larence Farber, Bffon and Dabenton: Diergent Traditions ithin the Histoire Natrelle, Isis 66, no. 1 (1975): 6374; and Jeff Loveland, Another Dabenton, Another Histoire Natrelle, Journal of the History of Biology 39, no. 3 (2006): 45791. 19 modes of description in igor at the time scientific and literar.25 She bilds a case for a more dominant role of description in eighteenth-centr riting. Bilding pon

Stalnakers analsis of modes of description, I eplore the Histoire naturelle as a space of prodctie interaction beteen to seemingl opposed tetal strategies. This interaction, I ill arge, reslts in an eperience of knoledge that transcends the tpical semiotic binar (signifier and signified), to instead create a ne meaning in the figral space between oppositions that literal langage cannot describe.

Chae 2 Paal el a e-daf f a eccledic jec: Paul et Virginie a ccli Sai-Piee Études de la Nature In his trael accont of a three-ear sta on le de France (Maritis), Jacqes

Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre describes a tension he senses in riting on natral histor; Jai cr oir le caractre sensible dne proidence; et jen ai parl, non comme dn sstme qi amse mon esprit, mais comme dn sentiment dont mon cr est plein.26 On one side of this tension, Saint-Pierre describes the creation of a sstem

hich breaks don proidence into discrsie categories and items for maniplation b the intellect; on the other side of the tension he finds a manner of commnication that re- encodes this proidence as satiating sentiment. Saint-Pierres noel Paul et Virginie, for

hich le de France is the setting, offers s a niqel positioned tet ith hich to

25 Joanna Stalnaker, The Unfinished Enlightenment: Description in the Age of the Encyclopedia (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2010).

26 Quotes from eighteenth-century French texts are given with the original eighteenth-century spelling and typographical conventions to render text as closely to what a period reader would have encountered since close reading and the visual experience of the page are important elements of this study. Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Voyage à l’île de France: un officier du roi à l’île Maurice: 1768-1770 (1773), ed. Yves Bénot (Paris: La Découverte, 1983), 26. 20 eamine this tension beteen disenchantment and re-enchantment, beteen système and sentiment.27 To condct this eploration, e shall consider this noels fnction in relation to Saint-Pierres other grand ork, Études de la Nature, a mlti-olme natral histor project.

One of the great ples srronding the noel Paul et Virginie is its role in the larger bod of ork b Saint-Pierre. Thogh it is a noel, Saint-Pierre claimed it as the clmination of his abandoned encclopedic project, Études de la Nature. For ears after declaring the Études at an impasse and haing it printed as it as, he pblished hat is argabl his most famos ork, the pastoral noel Paul et Virginie. Srprisingl, this noel is pblished as part of a ne edition of the Études. In the foreord to Paul et

Virginie, he rites that this ork as to be considered part of, and the conclsion to, his

Études de la Nature. In stating that Paul et Virgine as the conclsion to his nfinished

Études de la Nature, Saint-Pierre inites s to consider the articlation beteen the to

orks and to er different manners of recording a concept of natre.

Ho then can the tet of Paul et Virginie, positioned in the contet of a natral histor olme, help s to eplore the fnction of the noel in this tension beteen système and sentiment, beteen disenchantment and re-enchantment of the orld?

Chapter 2 eplores this noel as re-draft of the natral histor book ia the tools afforded b figratie riting in a different genre. Saint-Pierre appropriates the pastoral noel for his prposes, naigating beteen obseration and narration. From an eamination of

27 While it is more common to see this author referred to as Bernardin de Saint- Pierre, this is in fact a deformation of his name, as I will explain in Chapter 2. I follow Colas Dflos conention and refer to him throghot as Saint-Pierre instead. 21 these to facets of the same project, this chapter eplores ho sentiment takes the rela from système to delier knoledge and a ne rhetoric for a ne orld.

Chapter 3 - History of the Two Indies, a Singular Tale with Two Voices History and Philosophy Collide in the Histoire des deux Indes The Histoire des deux Indes (HDI) does not simpl relate a broad histor of colonial endeaors b the major Eropean poers of the da, nor does it simpl propose principles for the effectie epansion of inflence, nor does it jst qestion the principles on hich slaer and eploitation of other lands are based. It accomplishes all of these together throgh the comple, often contradictor, tet filled ith data, chronologies, eplanations as ell as apostrophes to the reader, irtal displacements, and ethical ehortations. The effectieness of its abilit to moe the reader and to elicit epistemic disrption can be indeed b the reactions of those ho old be affected b sch changes in pblic thoght. In 1780 hen the third edition as pblished, the book as banned, ordered brned b the athorities and its acknoledged athor forced to flee the contr to aoid prison.28

This chapter eplores the polphonic riting of the HDI as a creatie strateg that combines an empirical historical mode and a figratie philosophical mode to disrpt and reset the frameork of perception srronding colon and commerce. In the to main rhetorical modes (historical and philosophical), e ill trace a tension beteen eploitation and empath. We anale the effects of a tet prporting a single athor bt actall emboding seeral, primaril Gillame-Thomas Ranal and Denis Diderot.

28 For more on the official and controversial reaction to the HDI, see Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750- 1790 (Oxford University Press, 2013), 431-34. 22 Michle Dchet points to the athors conflicting priorities, lessentiel por Ranal tait linformation, et non lcritre o la composition.29 In particlar, I eamine the resonances beteen empirical and figral forces in the tet, joined in prodctie opposition. The HDI is a tet that can be appreciated for its content as an informational, historical tet, or it can be read for its literar qalities hich otherise might be disconted as mere ornamentation. In this chapter, I arge that this either/or classification is inadeqate to accont for the epistemic change the tet attempts to frame.

The eloqent pairing is intentional and essential to create the eperience of engagement embedded in the tet.

Throgh the chapters of this dissertation, e ill eamine tets ith an eplicit focs on knoledge prodction. In the conclsion, e ill broaden the inqir toard tets of narratie fiction that do not make an eplicit claim of knoledge prodction.

Working ith Rosseas La Nouvelle Héloïse, e ill test the disenchantment and re- enchantment analsis on a noel to demonstrate ho this reading can shed ne light on the dnamic beteen Jlie and St. Pre.

Ho can this tpe of analsis open ne istas into the cognitie, epistemic disrption of the eighteenth-centr noel and beond? B locating instances of the confrontations, collisions, and collsions of the arios opposing approaches to knoledge in each of these case stdies, I anale hat happens at the nes of these different rhetorical strategies.

29 Michèle Duchet, LHistoire des de Indes: sorces et strctre dn tete polphoniqe, in Lectures de Raynal: L'Histoire des deux Indes en Europe et en Amérique au XVIIIe siècle: Actes du colloque de Wolfenbüttel, ed. Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Manfred Tietz (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1991), 10. 23

Chapter One Tabling the Matter: The Problem of Nature Made into a Conceptual Object

Figure 1.1 and Figure 1.2. Side by side view of the table of contents pages for Buffon and Daubentons contributions to Tome 4 of the Histoire naturelle. (HN 4:iii–iv)

At first glance, this table of contents for the mid-eighteenth-century Histoire naturelle seems innocuous.1 It lists the topics covered in this volume and gives the corresponding page numbers, as well as signaling a trio of prefatory letters . And yet

1 George-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon and Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi, 36 vols., In-4º (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1749–1789). Hereinafter I will refer to this multi- volume work as either the Histoire naturelle or simply HN. 24 these pages are indicators of great tensions and the high stakes of rendering the natural world legible for humankinds benefit. The written word and engraved image that unlock the secrets of the physical world can confer the power to heal or to harm, to extract wealth or to explain humanitys place in relation to the rest of creation.

While collaborative encyclopedic projects are not uncommon in the eighteenth century, crediting the individual contributors is not the norm; however, the table of contents for the Histoire naturelle (shown above) clearly indicates which entries were written by which author.2 Stranger still, upon closer examination we realize that the texts written by Buffon and Daubenton are interspersed, and are not separated as the organization of the table at first seems to indicate. This unusual table is symptomatic of the collision of two different modes of representing knowledge found throughout this 10- volume book.

Indexing debates over epistemological authority and the “proper” way to conduct and communicate knowledge work, this table of contents reveals some of the critical questions eighteenth-century savants and philosophes grappled with in the Siècle des

Lumières. These questions include what is the goal for transcribing to paper the observable phenomena of nature, how to understand discoveries from new ports of call that challenge established notions, what is (and should be) the basis for reliable information? All of these questions are engaged with to one extent or another by the

2 As a prime example, this is the case with the Histoire des deux Indes, where Abbé Raynal did not credit any of the dozen sources of his book, instead claiming sole authorship for himself. 25 thinkers and writers of the critical Siècle des Lumières, either singly or as part of joint efforts, as is the case with the Histoire naturelle.

We begin this dissertation with a look at the Histoire naturelle because it was a project that experimented with, rejected, and ultimately validated the combination of two different rhetorical modes that illuminate the inner workings of some of the more fascinating texts of the French siècle des Lumières. The Histoire naturelle experimented with the combination of disenchanting and re-enchanting rhetorical strategies, discarded what we will call the disenchanting mode to publish an edition without it, and then ultimately decided the project required that missing dimension to achieve its goals and so restored it going forward. For this reason, the Histoire naturelle represents for us not only experimentation with the dynamic we will study here, but also a project that tested and confirmed the necessity of the two modes co-presence.

How to write a history of everything in the world When Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, and Louis-Jean-Marie

Daubenton set out to write the natural history of everything in the world, they likely considered the task of locating and observing all the specimens to be the primary challenge. In their own words the universe presents “un vaste spectacle dont lensemble est si grand, quil paraît & quil est en effet, inépuisable” (HN “Premier discours,” 1).

When the project hit a crisis point after the publication of the initial set of volumes in

1767 and Daubenton ceased working on it, a more fundamental underlying problem was revealed. Daubentons departure from the Histoire naturelle was for what Paul Farber

26 described as “a tension between their philosophic positions concerning natural history.”3

The disagreement between the two men arose over questions of the most accurate way to represent the object of their studies for the pages of the Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi (1749-1789). What most appropriately renders an animal for the pages of these tomes: a systematic table of measurements of the creature, a narrative description, or engraved illustrations? The stark disagreement between Daubenton, who favored comparative measurement tables, and Buffon, who preferred lively narrative and generalizing hypotheses, resulted in

Daubentons withdrawal from the project for a number of years.

Two and a half centuries later, their debate concerning the most appropriate representational paradigm has relevance to our modern practices and configuration of knowledge. The Histoire naturelles legacy extended into the future disciplines we would come to call biology, comparative anatomy, anthropology, and geology. At its core, the co-authors disagreement was about the fundamental method of recording and communicating about the reality in which we live. This sort of epistemological concern about representation was also shared by other sweeping classificatory projects of the period, such as Linnaeus Systema Naturae, and Diderot and dAlemberts grand

Encyclopédie, though these other projects took different approaches.

Swedish natural historian Carolus Linnaeus published the first edition of his

Systema Naturae in 1735 and continued refining and publishing new editions

3 Paul Lawrence Farber, “Buffon and Daubenton: Divergent Traditions within the Histoire Naturelle,” Isis 66, no. 1 (1975): 64. 27 contemporaneously with Buffons work on the Histoire naturelle, culminating with

Linneaus final, 12th edition in 1768. Linneaus aim, as recorded in the official title of the work,4 was to divide all the specimens of nature into three kingdoms (regnum in the Latin in which it was written) – the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom. His classification was recorded in and justified by a system of binomial nomenclature, declaring the genus and species for each specimen. This system of taxonomy is, in fact, the one still used by botanists and zoologists throughout most of the world today. For Linnaeus, the act of dividing nature into logical kingdoms gives rise to a system of naming that offers to contain all within its logical linguistic hierarchy. Any new discovery merely needs to be properly observed to determine its proper place in the kingdom, and hence the name that circumscribes that position. Each item fits somewhere in the hierarchy. Linnaeus proposed a system he readily acknowledged as artificial and utilitarian. It was not his aim to decipher an underlying divine plan of creation existant in nature, but rather to provide discursive order to the human perception of that creation.

His motto was “God created, Linnaeus organized” (Deus creavit, Linnaeus disposuit).

The importance of this system lay in its ease of naming specimens, limiting the name of each unique type of creature to two Latin terms. Earlier systems used Latin — the common language of knowledge in the West since the Middle Ages — but yielded contradictory and unwieldy names. The major critique Buffon leveled at Linnaeus and the hordes of amateur and aspiring natural historians he sponsored or encouraged was

4 Carolus Linneaus, Systema naturæ per regna tria naturæ, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis (Stockholm: L. Salvius, 1735-1768). 28 that they were nomenclateurs, in other words that they tried to fit everything into this pre- existing hierarchical structure of naming. For Buffon, the system and name could not come first, but instead organizing this knowledge required observation and reflection first, then classification based on that reasoned observation.

The conceptual conflict between representational regimes hinges on the fundamental difference between literal and figural discourse and their ability to represent the natural world in a way that may be interpreted as true. Norman Bryson complicates these two terms: he suggests that the figural is connected to perception, while the literal is understood in terms of its connection to language. Bryson locates the representational power of a work on a literal–figurative continuum. In this framing, the more the message of a work is communicated via figural elements, the more truthful it is perceived by the apprehending subject.5

In his argument, he contends that art offers a tension between the discursive and figural elements of the image/work and that the meanings carried by the figural are received as more real and more true; they “arouse our willingness to believe.”6 The meaning carried by the less verbally-influenced, more figural elements are;

felt as having been found, and this confirms exactly the natural attitude, where the meanings of gestures, clothing, physiognomy, body typing, and the other subtle semantic codes are felt to inhere in the objective world and are not understood as the product of particular cultural work.7

5 Norman Bryson, Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Régime (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 6 Bryson, Word and Image, 11. 7 Bryson, Word and Image, 15. 29

He argues that because a viewer/reader believes the figural (as the effect of the natural or real), he or she is more willing to believe the discursive. For Bryson, the figural naturalizes discourse and overcomes doubt to a greater or lesser extent. I hope to demonstrate that in the works studied in this dissertation that the discord between disenchanting and re-enchanting modes of expression (which are both presented as forms of truth) cannot be resolved in literal language and therefore the discord is resolved via figural thinking, which both naturalizes the truth claim and incurs an affective, non- verbal experience of that truth. This figural thinking helps to disrupt epistemic frameworks more powerfully than discursive, literal language can achieve on its own.

The complex literary device that proposes both disenchanting and re-enchanting passages, thereby inviting interpretation of epistemological claims via figural thinking I am calling “episto-poetics.” This dissertation is an examination and demonstration of the of poetics of epistemic disruption.

This epistemic disruption I claim for certain texts of the siècle des Lumières is made explicit in another of the major classificatory projects of the eighteenth century —

Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond dAlemberts 28-volume Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société de gens de lettres.8 While

Buffon and Daubentons subject matter was primarily the animal, vegetable, and mineral domains of the natural world, the Encyclopédie aimed to collect and organize a comprehensive record of knowledge of the arts, sciences, and crafts. The collaborators

8 Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond dAlembert, eds. Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société de gens de lettres, 28 vols. (Paris: Briasson, 1751-1772). 30

(or co-conspirators) wished to preserve the savoir and savoir-faire gained by previous generations, record it in a way that would reveal general systems, and pass along this information to future generations. They linked this objective to a larger goal of improving the happiness, virtue, and wisdom of their fellow human beings and descendants. Diderot stated an even more ambitious, and revealing, goal for the

Encyclopédie: “to change the common way of thinking” (changer la façon commune de penser).9 This he proposed to do both overtly and subtly through the structure of the

Encyclopédie. The overall organizing structure of the Encyclopédie was figured as a tree structure — the “Système figuré des connaissances humaines” diagram in the Discours préliminaire, with the major divisions of Memory, Reason, and Imagination encompassing history, philosophy, and poetry, respectively. By relegating religion to a position as a subset of philosophy in the schema, Diderot et al. asserted the dominance of human reason over metaphysical revelation.10

The tree of knowledge structure was an overt gesture to change the common way of thinking by sidelining the role of religion to a mere subject of study — theology. By employing the visual organizer of the tree structure, the encyclopedists could pass the polemical argument about religion on a figural level where the visual of the chart could

naturalize the argument powerfully and avoid writing more text that could prove

9 Found in Diderots article “Encyclopédie” in the discussion of the system of cross-references that would make a “good” encyclopedia (5:642). 10 For more discussion of the implications of this radical epistemological shift, see Robert Darntons chapter “Philosophers Trim the Tree of Knowledge” in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984, revised 2009). 31 controversial. The previously central role of divine truth was supplanted by human reason and empiricism. However, the Encyclopédie also employed a subtle method to shape or re-shape the reading subjects mental associations through a system of cross- references which would lead the reader from one article to other, related articles.11 In some instances, this system took the form of links from an article describing something the authors sought to critique to other articles citing principles and truths that subverted or overturned the first. For example, the article on habitations [colonial plantations] gives information useful to a reader wishing to know more about how plantations are structured and managed and does not include any criticism of slavery, but the article also includes cross references to “Nègres” and “Trente-six mois” (the latter is a term to refer to the indentured European workers). The Encyclopédie entry for “Trente-six mois” gives a critique of the harsh conditions these indentured workers endure by stating the conditions to be almost as bad as those endured by the enslaved, and then describing how deplorable the indentured worker situation is, gesturing toward the abuse of slavery obliquely. The linked articles covertly make a parallel between Europeans and the Black slaves, possibly inciting compassion by comparison. The practice of representation is not neutral. The act of creating links (renvois) between articles produces knowledge

11 By reading subject, I mean the subject position that is created through the manner that the text designates a way of being read. For efficiency of expression, I will at times simply refer to the “reader,” but in most cases I am referring to the subject created by the text. I do not wish to engage here in discussions about a conceptualized eighteenth-century reader or a super-reader. For more on the reading subject created by the text, see Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); or Roland Barthes, Le plaisir du texte, Points. Littérature 135 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1983). 32 conforming to a figural topography chosen by the editors. In itself it is a material practice of representation, adding another (extra-lingual) dimension to the work beyond

(and even more provocatively than) the meta-structure of the Encyclopédie in the “tree of knowledge” proposed by Diderot and dAlembert.

These organizing principles were, in some ways, an effort to “disenchant” the world from transcendental meanings and claim that all the knowable world is an object for the enlightened subject. This intention is not without its inherent risks, however.

Daniel Brewer suggests the stakes of this risk in The Discourse of Enlightenment in

Eighteenth-century France where he writes

If the eighteenth-century Enlighteners sought their freedom by refusing the paradigms and principles that unshakably grounded knowledge in religious and metaphysical terms, do they undo in the process the foundations of knowledge in general, including that of their own epistemological systems?12

Brewer answers this question by arguing that these philosophers accepted the complexity of an unresolved, and perhaps unresolvable “double bind” in the service of a more useful way of knowing.

They attempt to produce knowledge at its most useful, insisting above all on the arbitrary status of any way of representing knowledge […] Relying on the practice of reason (not acts of faith), stressing the role of the senses in the production of knowledge (and not the “innate ideas” of the Cartesian tradition), they insist on the empirical, experiential, determination of knowledge. Quite willing to accept partial, provisional knowledge, they seek above all a useful and effective way to represent the world and the human subjects place in it.13

12 Daniel Brewer, The Discourse of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France: Diderot and the Art of Philosophizing (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 5–6. 13 Brewer, The Discourse of Enlightenment, 2. 33

This brings us to another point about this organizing principle, with special relevance to our discussion of the Histoire naturelle — the relationship of humans to the knowledge thus laid out. Diderot wrote that since all systems of organizing are to some extent arbitrary, the choice of any system was fairly equal.14 Therefore, the encyclopedists chose to place humankind at the center of the universe of knowledge, and not God or divine authority. The Encyclopédie and the Histoire naturelle knowledge projects both engage in creative processes that navigate the tension between instrumentalizing knowledge and (re)contextualizing it.

This chapter examines how the authors Buffon and Daubenton contend with instrumentalizing and contextualizing knowledge (which I will consider under the umbrella terms disenchantment and re-enchantment) in the Histoire naturelle. By locating instances of the confrontations, collisions, and collusions of these two opposing approaches to knowledge, I analyze what happens at the nexus of these different rhetorical strategies. According to Jeff Loveland, history has painted Buffon and

Daubenton as opposites in their approach to writing natural history.15 Buffon generalizes, hypothesizes, and writes narratives that endow the subjects with almost human sentiment,

14 An additional “arbitrary” structuring element often overlooked by modern readers was sequencing the entries in alphabetical order from A to Z, which in the Middle Ages was not necessarily the case. See Richard Yeo, “Reading Encyclopedias: Science and the Organization of Knowledge in British Dictionaries of Arts and Sciences, 1730- 1850,” Isis 82, no. 1 (March 1991): 24–49. 15 Loveland cites biographers and historians such as Flourens, Cuvier, and Bourdier who propagated this image of Daubenton in their accounts. Jeff Loveland, “Another Daubenton, Another Histoire Naturelle,” Journal of the History of Biology 39, no. 3 (2006): 457–91. 34 social roles, and motivations. Daubenton, on the other hand, writes straightforward descriptions and lines up tables of comparative measurements. While it might be tempting to ascribe to Daubenton the discourse of disenchantment and to Buffon that of re-enchantment, this would be an oversimplification. Each author contends with both of these approaches in the text, to varying degrees, in their search to capture the truth of the specimens they observe. Their concern for discovering the truth of the natural world and also their critical skepticism for how to represent it may have its source in the philosophical debates in the century prior.

Much of the French scientific and philosophical inquiry of the eighteenth century was characterized by an ongoing response to René Descartes philosophical skepticism and search for the solid underpinnings of truth. When Descartes questioned the certainty and source of understanding in his Discours de la méthode in 1637, his writings inspired a generation of his readers to feel for the fault lines, not simply in the arguments of the knowledge they learned, but in the very justification and foundation of that knowledge.16

With Montaignes Renaissance question of “what do I know” (que scay-je?) no longer sufficient (though certainly still a primary obsession), now the questions of “how do I know what I know?” and “how can I be assured of its objective truth?” are epistemological anxieties with which these new generations of writers grapple.

Descartes Discours de la méthode gives voice to the uncertainty of knowing and probes the limits of cognition. His philosophy shapes in western European culture a

16 René Descartes, Discours de la méthode (1637), ed. Maurice Dorolle (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1934). 35 model for thinking about the world and the human subjects experience of it that divides mind from body, but locating that dividing line is an ongoing point of question.17 By writing the Discours not simply as an essay laying out a scholastic argument, but rather journaling the experience and process of his own questioning, Descartes makes his inward journey a virtual experience that others can share in reading it. He shares the experience of reflection, critique, and groping for answers. The reader of the text is momentarily displaced with Descartes into that virtual reality. However, more than just a mental voyeurism, this writing also figures that experience of questioning and discovering answers in a way that teaches a methodical approach and response to the chaos caused by unmooring from our mental preconceptions.

As eighteenth-century writers and thinkers reflected on Descartes experiment, the concept of questioning the basis for knowledge became an underpinning of the critical apparatus of the siècle des Lumières. As in Descartes case, discarding a previously held set of beliefs provokes a vertiginous loss of stability until a new method or structure fills the void. An empirical search for truth necessarily sets aside the supernatural. This search process disenchants the results by forbidding a connection between the material world and the supernatural, continuing a fissure started by Descartes.

In The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age, Joshua

Landy and Michael Saler argue that a process they refer to as “re-enchantment” fills a critical role in re-establishing a sense of order and mystique that can be lost when an old

17 See also Stéphane van Damme for a discussion of the cultural repercussions of Cartesian thought. Descartes: essai dhistoire culturelle dune grandeur philosophique (Paris: Presses de Sciences po, 2002). 36 order of knowledge is displaced.18 While they and their cohorts locate the disenchantment of the world in eighteenth-century Enlightenment works, they look to a later period for examples of re-enchantment, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

They posit re-enchantment as a wholly separate process, not functioning closely with disenchantment. Through a close examination of the Histoire naturelle, however, I argue that we find a case that leads us to question whether, at the level of the text (discourse, rhetoric, esthetic, figure and form), the disenchantment and re-enchantment processes are implicated in a more complicated fashion, working together in creative tension. I further suggest that this dynamic can be found more broadly in other texts of the eighteenth century and that it is reflection of the critical inquiries of the siècle des Lumières.

In the “Premier discours,” Buffon situates the Histoire naturelle and both explains and justifies the goal of the project. The object of study is not “La Nature” as such, but rather the prodigious multitude of objects presented by “lUnivers.” This multitude is a

“spectacle” offered to the curiosity of the human mind, “lesprit humain” (HN 1:3).

Buffon defines the proper goal of a natural history as doing primarily two things: “La description exacte & lhistoire fidèle de chaque chose est, comme nous lavons dit, le seul but quon doive se proposer dabord” (HN 1:21). By qualifying description (“exacte”) and history (“fidèle”), Buffon inserts his right to judge what methods produce exact and faithful results. It is the quality of these two that will determine the utility of a natural history. The end product is a print representation that must stand before the human

18 Joshua Landy and Michael T Saler, The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).

37 intellect in place of any given object of the universe. The groundbreaking Histoire naturelles ultimate task does not culminate merely in truthful description and history, but rather in the reading subjects mental operations on these objects.

Buffon sees several different activities at work to meet the goals of creating a natural history.19 These tasks marry an analytical element with an esthetic element. The natural historian, whom he also terms the Observateur, must be able to comprehend and to compare the specimens of the natural world, but also to love them. To understand and analyze the vast quantity of specimens, the savants must possess “une espèce de force de génie,” and to love them they must possess “une espèce de goût.” Buffon further elaborates his definitions of the goût [taste] and the amour [love] required to do natural history in the following passage.

car il y a une espèce de force de génie & de courage desprit à pouvoir envisager, sans sétonner, la Nature dans la multitude innombrable de ses productions, & à se croire capable de les comprendre & de les comparer; il y a une espèce de goût à les aimer, plus grand que le goût qui na pour but que des objets particuliers; & lon peut dire que lamour de létude de la Nature suppose dans lesprit deux qualités qui paraissent opposées, les grandes vues dun génie ardent qui embrasse tout dun coup doeil, & les petites attentions dun instinct laborieux qui ne sattache quà un seul point. (HN “Premier discours,” 1:4)

19 Buffon and Daubenton are certainly not the first to undertake a written natural history. Buffon explicitly inscribes his work in the lineage of Pliny. Buffon is in fact referred to at times as the “Pline de Montbard.” Other major projects in this genealogy would include Aristotles Historia Animalium, Pliny the Elders Naturalis Historia, the natural history writings of Francis Bacon, and the contemporary grand Encyclopédie of Diderot and dAlembert. 38

Ultimately, Buffons text employs strategies for both comprehension and esthetic appreciation, but it is esthetics that is privileged. Both are said to be necessary for the production of knowledge, but, in the language of the work, it is the sense of style or taste

[goût] that enjoys more favored treatment. One may wonder at this place of importance accorded to the esthetic in a work primarily concerned with contesting and communicating empirical knowledge of the natural world. An examination of the analytic strategies and the esthetic strategies at work will illustrate this preference. To consider some revelatory examples, we will analyze passages and images drawn from the

Histoire naturelles volumes on quadrupeds (tomes I though XV). We will limit ourselves to the quadrupeds texts because they appear in the only volumes on which both

Buffon and Daubenton worked together. Additionally, their work on animals posed complexities of representation in word and image that the later volumes on minerals and birds did not. These challenges of representation bring to the surface the underlying tectonic shifts in paradigm that I would argue make the Histoire naturelle one of the intellectual levers of the Enlightenment that eventually changed the very manner of human cognition.20

In a passage of the Histoire naturelles “Premier discours,” Buffon insists that there is a deeper purpose to natural history. He wants to elevate the task of natural history to something grander and more worthy of occupying savants. Buffon suggests

20 Among other texts performing similar epistemological and cognitive work in this time period, I will refer again to the Encyclopédie of Diderot and dAlembert, noting Diderots stated objective of “changer la façon commune de penser” [to change the common way of thinking] (article “Encyclopédie,” 5:642A). 39 that keen analytical work, which includes synthesizing observations, discovering links, and using the power of analogies to uncover general truths about the operation of nature, will open the paths to perfect understanding of the natural world (HN 1:51). Reliable knowledge of the operations of the physical universe held the keys to instrumentalizing information for the benefit of humankind.

Buffon and Daubentons work of observing and describing the quadrupeds of the known world and setting that knowledge down on printed page was an Enlightenment response to Descartes suggestion that the realm of the intellect could attain at least a workman-like understanding of the physical world, and employ it for the mutual betterment of the body and mind.21 Where previous natural philosophers seem hesitant to claim worldly benefit without the support of spiritual justification, the authors of the

Histoire naturelle do not rely on moral language aside from certain framing remarks about the creator.22

Throughout this section of the “Premier discours,” Buffon modulates between body, mind, and vision. Buffons ideal savants have a disciplined vision that encompasses both the broader context and particular details.

21 Descartes, Discours de la méthode, 1, 6. 22 Buffons writing in volumes I and II on geology, the formation of the Earth, and the impossibility of physical interactions with the soul merited him a rebuke in January 1751 from the Deputies and Corporate Body of the Faculté de Théologie de Paris, whom he mollified with a response re-affirming the authority of Scripture and making statements clarifying the orthodoxy of the objectionable passages, along with the promise of including the rectifying correspondence in volume 4 of the Histoire naturelle (HN 4:v-xvi). 40

Une grande mémoire, de lassiduité & de lattention suffisent pour arriver au premier but [la description exacte et les faits particuliers] ; mais il faut ici quelque chose de plus, il faut des vûes générales, un coup dœil ferme & un raisonnement formé plus encore par la réflexion que par létude ; il faut enfin cette qualité desprit qui nous fait saisir les rapports éloignez, les rassembler & en former un corps didées raisonnées, après en avoir apprécié au juste les vraisemblances & en avoir pesé les probabilités. (HN 1:51)

These ideal savants reason and reflect rather than simply being masters of established erudition. This practice of reason and reflection represents a new understanding of epistemological practice and a major repositioning of the subjects relation to knowledge, as well as a transformation of the notion of author and authority.

Prior to this, the authority of canonical authors dictated that one collect, assemble, and account for existing texts on a subject. By rejecting this convention, Buffon moves to reposition the epistemological subject. Buffon and Daubenton do not just amass what has been said already. To reason and reflect critically stands in opposition to the established practice of relying safely on the past production of authorities. Buffons writing reveals a shift in this practice. He is critical of even his contemporaries; he is driven to forge a new way of producing knowledge. It should not rely on the imposition of arbitrary systems (like Linnaean taxonomy), which could be a placeholder for authority from the past. Instead, this practical, empirical way of producing knowledge should question what is there — which is a difficult task and requires effort. Note the lexical field of physical manipulation figured in the passage; seizing (saisir), distant things (éloignés), joining them together (rassembler), and shaping (former). These are not gentle, unquestioning acts of placing items where they “belong” on a list. Buffon calls our attention to the

41 effort involved in this new kind of knowledge work. It is disruptive and creative. It does not accept the old order. But it is not nihilistic; this work displaces objects out of the old order and seeks to find not just a new order, but a reasoned order motivated by the logic of the things themselves. It is an attempt to harmonize our mental system of understanding with a fresh empirical observation of the physical world. As Foucault argues in Les mots et les choses, this drastic shift in representational practice is indeed an indication of change in the fundamental conditions of possibility of knowledge.23

In this new knowledge practice seen in Buffon and Daubentons work, disciplined vision and reason together produce a quality of intellect that can deal in the realm of relations. The savants intellect must see the analogies between different objects of the material world and judge the truth and likelihood of those relations. The savants must be capable of grasping disparate ideas and juxtaposing or joining them to form a unified body of ideas, a reasoned body of ideas.

Buffon suggests that to attain the goal of perfecting knowledge of physics, of the operation of the tangible, natural world, certain processes must be conducted by a person possessing specific qualities. Doing what Buffon proposes requires more than what is needed for doing history work (good memory, assiduous work, and attention, according to Buffon). In his view, to master the work of description requires overall vision (“vues générales”), a keen eye, and reasoning formed more by reflection than by study. In this passage, Buffons text moves from a lexical field of vision (“des vues,” “coup doeil,”

23 Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses; une archéologie des sciences humaines, Bibliothèque des Sciences Humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). 42 and “réflexion” as a homonym for visual reflection), to a lexical field of physical manipulation (“saisir,” “éloignés,” “rassembler,” “en former”), and finally to terms of evaluation (“avoir apprécié,” and “avoir pesé”). Through this transition, the text first presents visual substantives, then infinitives of faire causatif (physical manipulations), followed by infinitif passé (evaluation). The text presents the sequence of operations in distorted chronology, using the past infinitive to refer to previously accomplished actions even though given as the last words in the passage. The body of reasoned ideas is formed after the relationships among the parts have been evaluated.

Here the material and mental world work together, passing the object from vision to intellect, performing almost tangible mental manipulations that then are exteriorized in physical form as text — shareable knowledge of natural history. The text of this work then is the exteriorization of the “body of reasoned ideas” (corps didées raisonnées). A physical manifestation of thought, intended to be re-processed by the mind later, is what cognitive psychologists today call distributed cognition. Buffon cautions that both method and medium are crucial to the preservation of this knowledge. Without method, what is shared is an arbitrary arrangement of words; rather, a good method follows and supports the very order of things itself and guides reasoning.24 Without proper recording, knowledge may be lost. Buffon conjectures that if any great thinkers of the past did reach such an elevated point in natural history, their work is lost to the Modernes of the eighteenth century. Nonetheless, what Buffon and Daubenton accomplish with the text

24 This repositioning of epistemological perspective is a major focus of Foucaults Les mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). 43 object of the Histoire naturelle breaks with the Anciens in more than just nomenclature and method to then create the conditions of possibility for a more fundamental disruption.25

Michel Foucaults work on the conditions of possibility underlying knowledge and systems of representation has a profound impact on our reading of the Histoire naturelle. Foucault is well-known for his work on representation and his elucidation of the concept of the “archeology of knowledge.” This archeological model emphasizes chronology via the disruptive changes in the knowing subjects relation to what is known and how that knowledge is structured.26 In Les mots et les choses (The Order of Things),

Foucault develops his theory of the épistémè. Foucault uses this Greek term to conceptualize a theory that epistemology is widely shared within Western culture and that it undergoes periodic sudden changes which fundamentally re-structure representational practices. I argue that the Histoire naturelle should be seen as one of the levers that functioned to shift the episteme of the siècle des Lumières.

25 The quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns was a spirited debate that arose in the late seventeenth century opposing the intellectual authority of classical antiquity against the progress of modern invention. See Jennifer Tsien and Jacques Morizot, “18th Century French Aesthetics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2019 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2019), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/aesthetics-18th-french/. 26 It is in LArchéologie du savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1969) that Foucault makes explicit the methods and archeological approach to historiography he used implicitly in earlier works such as La Naissance de la clinique (Paris: PUF 1963) and Les mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). In fact, using the term archeology is a catachresis for Foucault who was searching for an exact term to render his concept and finding none that fit perfectly. 44

For Foucault, the concept of archeological method helps to explain the intellectual excavation of the series of discontinuities and ruptures that succeed one another in contingent fashion throughout history, rather than as a sort of linear, rational, or inevitable progression. Additionally, archeology evokes the excavation of what is normally hidden from view, affording an important place to the unconscious and unspoken as shaping forces for what may be meaningfully verbalized during a given era.

Foucault posits that unconscious rules, or discursive formations, dictate not just what statements can mean, but rather how they mean, and that these rules change over time.

This results in an unspoken set of boundaries on how knowledge is framed, authorized, expressed, and organized.

As a radical challenge to a claim of true objectivity, Foucaults exploration points out that the epistemic underpinnings of knowledge and theory change and are thus filtered by a discursive framework. The episteme presents the conditions of possibility for knowledge and truth. “In any given culture and at any given moment, there is always only one episteme that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in a practice.”27 Foucault traces the changes in the epistemic framework from the Renaissance through the classical period and into the modern era. He asserts that the very manner of thinking changes with these changes. But what causes or allows these tectonic shifts in thought? While Foucaults archeological approach would indicate that the Histoire naturelle illustrates the episteme of the siècle des Lumières, my argument is that we can take this idea further to suggest that the work

27 Foucault, LArchéologie du savoir, 168. 45 undertaken by Buffon and Daubenton in the Histoire naturelle was a marker of epistemic disruption in the eighteenth century. As outlined in the “Premier discours” and actualized in the entries on quadrupeds, the Histoire naturelle offers a cognitive remapping of the world.

Foucault points us to a history of thought conceptualized as a discovery of succeeding layers of not simply thought, but of the entire system of what is possible to think. Foucault suggests that this succession is not a smooth progressive evolution.

Genealogy does not resemble the evolution of a species and does not map the destiny of a people. On the contrary, to follow the complex course of descent is to maintain passing events in their proper dispersion; it is to identify the accidents, the minute deviations – or conversely, the complete reversals – the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those things that continue to exist and have value for us; it is to discover that truth or being does not lie at the root of what we know and what we are, but the exteriority of accidents.28

Therefore, in this light, we may see that the Histoire naturelle attempts to do something more than simply continue the conversation about nature and the world with new information to fit within the old framework. Instead it creates an entirely new representational model for thinking about the world. What is exciting is that it is not just writing about a proposed new way of thinking, it employs the written page to create a new experience of thinking the world. The Histoire naturelles reader potentially creates

28 Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Language, Counter- memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. D.F. Bouchard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 146.

46 or performs new thought processes in reading the text, tables, and engravings of the

Histoire naturelle.

A close examination of the text and illustrations of the Histoire naturelle reveals the ways this work positions itself in relation to the pre-existing way of thinking about the objects we encounter in the physical world. More importantly, this examination demonstrates how the text functions to disrupt the existing episteme and shape a new one.

The “Premier discours” of the Histoire naturelle serves as an entry point, orienting the reader and our study of the work as a tool of epistemic disruption.

The “Premier discours” clearly inscribes the text of the Histoire naturelle in a grand lineage. It opens with an epigraph from Plinys Naturalis Historia (written in CE

77-79). The quote, from Plinys preface, comments on the difficulty of the task of describing nature and in so doing to “give novelty to what is old, authority to what is new.”29 Pliny in fact claims to be the only one, Roman or Greek, to have ventured a complete description of nature; thus Buffons claim of similarity to Plinys work for his own eighteenth-century Histoire naturelle is a bold one. A reader familiar with Pliny might recognize that Buffon stopped his own citation short of the last phrase of Plinys passage, which begged clemency if the work fell short of completion, for “even if we have not succeeded, it is honourable and glorious in the fullest measure to have resolved on the attempt” (translation by Rackham). Buffon is doubly bold therefore to exclude

29 In the original Latin, “Res ardua vetustis novitatem dare, novis auctoritatem, obsoletis nitorem, obscuris lucem, fastiditis gratiam, dubiis fidem; omnibus verò naturam, & naturæ sum omnia.” See Rackhams translation of Plinys Preface in Pliny, Naturalis Historia (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1938) 11. 47 this appeal to merit for the effort alone; he envisions completion from the outset. Paul

Farber also comments on the Histoire naturelles explicit debt to authors of antiquity, stating that Buffon navigated between system building and radical empiricism,

“consciously placing himself in the tradition of the great naturalists of antiquity, Aristotle and Pliny, who he felt studied the particulars of nature in order to discover its underlying laws.”30 Buffons text, however, must be read as a rephrasing of what constitutes authority in the discussion and classification of nature.

The Histoire naturelle is similar to and different from Plinys work. Like Plinys

Naturalis Historia, this work offers a tour of the natural world, and like the Latin work, this one discusses the objects of study all in relation to humankind. However, a major difference between the two is that Plinys natural world abounded in divine, pantheistic presence. According to that teleological view, nature was a nurturing goddess whose main purpose was to serve the human race. In that view, nature is constantly in the process of caring for humankind, and this is natures purpose and goal. Buffon and

Daubentons work sets aside the pantheistic divine to focus instead on empirical observations, exact descriptions, and faithful histories. And here, faith is placed in what can be corroborated by the evidence of the senses and repeated experimentation, rather than in metaphysical claims or spiritual authorities.

Buffon further distances his text from his predecessors by excluding tales of fanciful creatures from the pages of the Histoire naturelle. For Buffon, the claim to

30 See Farber, “Buffon and Daubenton: Divergent Traditions within the Histoire Naturelle,” particularly 65-66. 48 exactitude and faithful, observation-based truth outweighed his predecessors common agenda of comprehensive coverage. Buffon criticizes other natural history authors, in particular the popularizer Noël-Antoine Pluche, for including entries on creatures they had not seen in order to include the work of preceding authorities.31 Here again we see the authors effort to position this work in opposition to previous similar projects. The authority of the Histoire naturelle emanates from a different place than that of other natural histories – its authority does not come from the pedigree of previous writings collected and indexed in the new text, but rather the predecessor texts are a priori rejected and the authority of the Histoire naturelle derives from that rejection. This critical stance represents an epistemic disruption and reflects a different episteme which is in the process of formation, one which places authority in empirical evidence.

One other crucial difference between the two works is their stated object. Plinys text cites Nature and even life itself as the object of study. Buffon defines nature differently to include “tous les objets que nous présente lUnivers” (HN “Premier discours,” 1:3). We note that Buffon specifically does not invoke the ambiguous referentiality of “Nature” and all of that terms spiritual and allegorical implications here.

Where the figure of Nature might open the Histoire naturelles work to exactly the sort of pantheistic approach Pliny embraced, Buffon limits this study to the “vaste spectacle” of

31 One may also consider that Pluches book had another aim – to encourage young people to pursue natural history studies themselves – which may have influenced the content selection strategy. Pluches goal is apparent in the full title of the work, Le spectacle de la nature, ou Entretiens sur les particularités de lHistoire naturelle qui ont paru les plus propres à rendre les jeunes gens curieux et à leur former lesprit, 9 vols. (Paris: Frères Estienne, 1732). 49 the universe offered to the human mind via the senses, particularly vision (spectacle).

Buffon selects the word “univers” rather than nature, so as to encompass the entire natural world while avoiding the potential allegorical contamination that the term

“nature” might bring to the text here where the reader first enters it. Once they have established this clarification in the beginning, Buffon and Daubenton will use the word nature with its various connotations later in the text, just not to define the proper object of their study.

We should note that particularly in eighteenth-century French writing the term

“nature” is employed by many authors for many different ends. French literary and intellectual historian Paul Hazard went so far as to claim that the main idea of the eighteenth century was not that of progress, but rather nature.32 Nature may serve to refer to myths of classical antiquity, it may be an idealized Edenic space, it may be an active or passive agent shaping living organisms — often then signaled by the proper noun

“Nature” — and it may serve as a substitute for God in discussions of natural religion.

Buffons choice to select “the objects that the universe presents us” as the focus of the study is a careful choice to avoid the potential problems with the term “nature” that was much in vogue and dangerously polyvalent.33

32 Paul Hazard, La crise de la conscience européenne, 1680-1715, Les grandes études littéraires (Paris: A Fayard, 1963). 33 To give an idea of the breadth of the usage of nature in the French eighteenth- century, Jean Ehrards careful and exhaustive work on the subject, Lidée de nature en France dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1963), covers the usage in painstaking detail over 861 pages. Note that Ehrard chose to limit his study to only the first half of the century, finding that the subject becomes even more complex after the mid-century mark and the philosophical discussions that precede and accompany the French Revolution. 50

Buffon thus frames the object of study for natural history differently than many predecessors, emphasizing empirical observation of the objects presented to the senses rather than a potentially theological observation of the work of the divine, i.e. “Nature.”

Given this care to shear the metaphysical associations from the objects of study, it may then come as a surprise that Buffon defines the natural historians work as not just analytical, but also explicitly esthetic.

In the “Premier discours,” after citing the imperfection of even the most assiduous work of previous natural historians, Buffon encourages praise for their patience and hard work.

car il y a une espèce de force de génie & de courage desprit à pouvoir envisager, sans sétonner, la Nature dans la multitude innombrable de ses productions, & à se croire capable de les comprendre & de les comparer ; il y a une espèce de goût à les aimer, plus grand que le goût qui na pour but que des objets particuliers ; & lon peut dire que lamour de létude de la Nature suppose dans lesprit deux qualités qui paroissent opposées, les grandes vûes dun génie ardent qui embrasse tout dun coup dœil, & les petites attentions dun instinct laborieux qui ne sattache quà un seul point. […] Mais lorsquon est parvenu à rassembler des échantillons de tout ce qui peuple lUnivers, lorsquaprès bien des peines on a mis dans un même lieu des modèles de tout ce qui se trouve répandu avec profusion sur la terre, & quon jette pour la première fois les yeux sur ce magasin rempli de choses diverses, nouvelles & étrangères, la première sensation qui en résulte, est un étonnement mêlé dadmiration, & la première réflexion qui suit, est un retour humiliant sur nous-mêmes. (HN 1:4)

The esthetic activity of the natural historian dominates his analytical activity. In

Buffons Histoire naturelle, the tension between analytical and esthetic reflects his concern to mark their differences while still conserving both as necessary to the work. By opening a space of opposites in constant dynamic relation inside creative activity, Buffon

51 positions artistic creation as effective, positive, and meaningful. In this text, esthetic work is predicated on two intellectual qualities, described in a way that creates a vast and dynamic space for contemplation between them. One quality is that of the genius of the

“big picture” who can take it all in and conceive a vision of the whole. The second quality is the laborious attention to fine detail on the part of the savant who can focus on but a single point. A few lines of text in this passage are devoted to describing the willpower and courage to perform analytical work, drawing from a lexical field of effort and resistance with terms like force, courage, sétonner, innombrable, and se croire capable. However, the esthetic action receives about 50% more text treatment in the paragraph. The lexical field associated with esthetic work is much more positive, grouping together terms such as aimer, plus grand, le goût, lamour, la Nature, lesprit, grandes vues, génie ardent, and embrasser. Additionally, where the analytical is characterized with a lexical network of effort against resistance, the esthetic is depicted with terms of effective intellectual work and goal achieved: létude, le but, supposer, embrasser tout, dun coup, petites attentions, laborieux, and un point.

Buffons move to value génie merits a closer examination of what exactly is meant by the term in the eighteenth century. Not only does the direct translation into the

English word “genius” pose an unfortunate semantic simplification (“An exceptionally intelligent or talented person, or one with exceptional skill in a particular area of art, science,” Oxford English Dictionary), there are aspects of the French word “génie” in the

1700s that we would be well-advised to recall. Deriving from two different etymological origins (divinité tutélaire and production/genèse) and having multiple distinct definitions,

52 the word génie is at once obvious and hard to pin down. Genius is an evaluative term whose value is historically and culturally constructed. Ann Jefferson, in Genius in

France: An Idea and Its Uses, argues that in the eighteenth century the word came to fill a need to describe something or someone possessing both superior quality and distinctive character.34 Jean-Alexandre Perras posits that in eighteenth-century France, the term genius underwent a semantic shift from primarily describing quality to designating a person, that is, to call out from among the commonplace and elevate an individual as being a genius. “At the time Mercier was writing [1801], the issue is not that genius is a matter of gradation, as he suggests, but of essence. […] At the end of the eighteenth century, genius has become synonymous with a superior individual.”35

The “Premier discours” expresses a desire for a greater conformity between language and the signified. The complexity of the language of description, the failures of systematic nomenclatures, and the seemingly inevitable gap between description and the described are all targets of Buffons criticism.

Cette prétention quont les Botanistes, détablir des systèmes généraux, parfaits & méthodiques, est donc peu fondée ; aussi leurs travaux nont pû aboutir quà nous donner des méthodes défectueuses, […]

cest comme si on vouloit connoître la différence des animaux par la différence de leurs peaux ou par celle des parties de la génération; & qui ne voit que cette façon de connoître nest pas une science, & que ce nest tout au plus quune convention, une langue arbitraire, un moyen de sentendre, mais dont il ne peut résulter aucune connoissance réelle? Me seroit-il permis de dire ce que je pense sur lorigine de ces différentes

34 Ann Jefferson, Genius in France: An Idea and Its Uses (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015). 35 Jean-Alexandre Perras, “Genius as Commonplace in Early Modern France,” LEsprit créateur 55, no. 2 (2015): 21.

53

méthodes, & sur les causes qui les ont multipliées au point quactuellement la Botanique elle-même est plus aisée à apprendre que la nomenclature, qui nen est que la langue? Me seroit-il permis de dire quun homme auroit plûtôt fait de graver dans sa mémoire les figures de toutes les plantes, & den avoir des idées nettes, ce qui est la vraie Botanique, que de retenir tous les noms que les différentes méthodes donnent à ces plantes, & que par conséquent la langue est devenue plus difficile que la science? (Emphasis mine; HN 1:15-16)

He advocates for a transparency and semiotic immediacy in the system of representation that would seem impossible for the number of specimens the universe would present. In a move that appears almost nostalgic of Edenic universality, the

“Premier discours” proposes that each individual specimen (animal, plant, or mineral) be given one single name, but if similar enough to others that differ only by some specific trait, then distinguished with an adjective for each gradation of difference (HN “Premier discours,” 1:22). In this fashion, language would be made to conform to the physical existence of each object, approaching an asymptotic limit where speech almost evokes the thing itself. (Diderot examines this same quandary where perfect description would be as complex as the world it seeks to describe in his article “Encyclopédie”).36 Buffon does not clarify what language would accomplish this task, neither condemning the use of

Latin nor promoting the use of French.

36 This recalls Diderots comment in the article “Encyclopédie” about the impossibility of a grand endeavor of representation to exclude the arbitrary, “Lunivers soit réel soit intelligible a une infinité de points de vûe sous lesquels il peut être représenté, & le nombre des systèmes possibles de la connoissance humaine est aussi grand que celui de ces points de vûe. Le seul, doù larbitraire seroit exclu, cest comme nous lavons dit dans notre Prospectus, le système qui existoit de toute éternité dans la volonté de Dieu.” (Encyclopédie 5:640). 54

Buffon does not want to apply a predefined system to the observations. He feels this use of such a system would skew and filter the results beforehand, missing the truth.

Taxonomy and classification systems necessarily introduce the arbitrary into the process, according to Buffon (HN “Premier discours,” 1:13), which is the basis of his argument against the Linnaean system. To establish a basis for the approach he proposes, Buffon first argues the weakness of every other system: “en effet se proposer de faire une méthode parfaite, cest se proposer un travail impossible” (HN “Premier discours,” 1:14).

However, Buffon admits that in trying to find the perfect system, many other useful things were discovered. The false goal serves a useful purpose, nonetheless. While he critiques other savants (Gesner, Linnaeus, Aldrovandi, de Tournefort, and botanists in general) who have created or populated these other systems of nomenclature, he admits some utility to their works as an index to similar specimens. However, he ultimately dismisses each of these methods as producing nothing more than a “dictionnaire” where the specimens are ordered relative to the central classifying philosophy and thus in an order just as arbitrary as alphabetical order (HN “Premier discours,” 1:24).

Buffon expresses a desire for transparent language that accurately translates the natural object in an epistemological context. An absolutely essential point for our understanding the grander epistemological work of the Histoire naturelle is to realize that for Buffon, taxonomies cleave the object from its network of natural relationships and strip description of its ability to connect disparate items to the world structure that helps humans make sense of them. The discursive, literal language of categorization fails somehow in the task of signifying adequately. In contrast, descriptive texts can sustain

55 context. Buffon is not alone in his strong use of description in this period. In her book

Unfinished Enlightenment, Joanna Stalnaker rehabilitates description as more than a support to narration in the eighteenth century, arguing that description was used to make the reader enter the world of ideas and objects.37 The Histoire naturelle operates precisely through inviting the reader into an experience of the world and its objects. This experience breaks with that offered by other natural history works. It shears away what

Buffon and Daubenton deemed superfluous in others approaches but also contextualizes and figures this knowledge in structures of relationship to supply a sense of place and order.

Buffon critiques two camps of natural historians – those who have no method, and those who want to make everything fit into one particular pre-established system (HN

“Premier discours,” 1:23). The first group he calls the “curieux” who seek primarily entertainment and novelty and who lack their own ability to discriminate beyond what the seller of curiosities tells them. The second are the more knowledgeable but blinded by their dedication to one particular method. They wind up burdening the field with their own faulty ideas, distorting observations to fit their theory, or losing their ability to see things as they truly are. The perils of conflating truth with the concept of objectivity have been elegantly explored by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison.38 Both Buffons

37 See Joanna Stalnaker, The Unfinished Enlightenment: Description in the Age of the Encyclopedia (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2010) xi–xii and 3–27, for an in- depth discussion of the greater value description as a genre held in the eighteenth century. 38 In Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007), Daston and Galison explore the history of the concept of objectivity, exposing how differences in the use of the concept over time point to different epistemological regimes. 56 critique and Daston and Galisons history of objectivity point to the role of the observer and the partiality of perception in what is supposed to be an impartial truth claim. Daston and Galison examine how the term “objectivity” is often accepted to refer to an unbiased, universal empirical claim; however, particularly in scientific study, this claim can be shown to reflect observer bias. One example they cite is the tendency of an observer recording water droplets to smooth out irregularities in the drawings used as laboratory data, assuming the irregularities were caused by imperfection in the experimental process or equipment. This was done without an overt decision to change the data, but in a desire to present the “best data.” It was not until a camera was used to record the droplet impacts that the irregularities were recorded and became data to explore the physics. The photographic technology imposed a sort of “mechanical objectivity,” which changed the accepted truth from an ideal image to a particular image, opening the door to perceive variations in the specimens. The change in approach leads to the disruption of what is accepted as truth. The Histoire naturelles disruption in approach also challenges the way truth is constituted in eighteenth-century knowledge writing.

Buffon creates space for what we may term his anti-system of natural history by opposition to what he has reviewed and found wanting in others attempts. The Histoire naturelle declares itself to be systematic in its rejection of systems, claiming an immediacy of language that situates each object in its context, with each object described so unambiguously that its truth must be apparent. Not only the description but the contextualization is critical to place the object within the epistemological framework of the mind apprehending it. For Buffon, description alone is not enough. He instead

57 proposes that “la vraie méthode, […] est la description complète & lhistoire exacte de chaque chose en particulier” (HN “Premier discours,” 1:25). Beyond requiring that description be paired with history, he finds fault with others descriptive work. Buffon critiques previous efforts at description, “Dans le grand nombre dAuteurs qui ont écrit sur lHistoire Naturelle, il y en a fort peu qui aient bien décrit” (HN “Premier discours,”

1:25). For Buffon, description loses its quality of truth when it is written with presuppositions or preconceived systems in mind. Excesses of style, ornamentation, imagination, or extraneous erudition are among the flaws he decries in other natural history works, such as in Aldrovandi,39 the works of German scholars of Buffons day, and indeed “presque dans tous les livres faits il y a cent ou deux cens ans” (HN 1:26).

Buffon has proposed that his Histoire naturelle shall have for its object actual specimens of the natural world, not the collected imperfect writings of previous authors. He depicts

Aldrovandi writing a natural history by sitting in the library poring over various books by authors of many disparate disciplines from all time periods ranging from classical antiquity to his contemporaries, compiling a thick file of notes on every word written on each animal. Buffon critiques Aldrovandi as representative of this type of natural history writer for not having the courage to discard any of the previous written description.

Buffon employs hyperbole with repeated “every… every… every” in a list of sources not of natural knowledge, but of mystification; superstitions, old wives tales, accounts of

39 Italian naturalist Ulisse Adrovandi, 1522-1605. Both Buffon and Linnaeus point to Aldrovandi as an important predecessor in natural history. See “Aldrovandus” in Joseph Thomas Universal Pronouncing Dictionary of Biography and Mythology (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1870). 58 miracles from different religious traditions, poetic comparisons, and animal representations in ancient hieroglyphs, in short, “toutes les histoires & toutes les fables dont on sest jamais avisé au sujet des coqs ou des bœufs” (HN 1:28). The result of this heteroclite mixture of supernatural tales, literary invention, and undiscriminating compilation of previous texts is a “fratras décritures,” in Buffons view (HN 1:28). Not only does Buffon want to clean up descriptive writing, he stresses the need to create context and relation between the object of study and the human subject apprehending it.

History, as Buffon conceives of it, is what provides this context.

In the Buffonian project, history is even more important than description for true natural history. “Les choses […] ne sont encore rien lorsquelles ont un nom, mais elles commencent à exister pour nous lorsque nous leur connaissons des rapports” (HN

“Premier discours,” 1:25). The faithful history of each specimen gives the context and relationships necessary for understanding. One proof of the primacy of history for

Buffon can be seen in the fact that he himself undertook the history portion of each entry, assigning Daubenton the separate entries for description and associated inventory of royal curiosities. Buffons phrase, cited above, makes an interesting assertion about cognition and representation. He claims that things exist for a subject, in this case “nous,” when we know some relation to them, not simply when we know the word for it. It is not enough to have a name for things. Language divorced from context has no meaning. Things are still nothing [rien] when they are given a name. At this point we remark that Buffon is describing a progression. Objects are still nothing when they have a name, claims

Buffon, but they begin to exist when the knowing subject can integrate the object into a

59 framework of relationships [rapports]. This interpretation must be further nuanced to acknowledge that Buffon is not claiming that objects lack physical existence independent of the knowing subject, but rather that these things begin to exist for us [pour nous] when we perceive relationships that integrate this new knowledge into some framework. These rapports are ambiguous — how are we to understand the expression “nous leur connaissons des rapports?” One could argue that the rapports are rooted in the “nous” of the phrase, and that these rapports are in relation to the subject (nous). This agrees with what cognitive scientists claim about how human beings process and represent new knowledge.40 In this case, Buffon is arguing that any taxonomy which merely assigns a word to a specimen, without creating a link to other knowledge, is empty language, a sign devoid of significance. He does not reject the need for a name, stating that this is a beginning to create meaning, its early status marked by the “encore” paired with the negation “ne … rien,” showing that it is not yet that which it will become. The process of becoming continues with the elucidation of links to other knowledge.

As I mentioned, the ambiguous status of the rapports from the phrase “nous leur connaissons des rapports” leads us in two directions. Either the rapports are to the perceiving subject, or among the objects being studied. The subject is able to bring the object into existence within his/her mind through the relation to other knowledge the subject already possesses or through understanding the relation between the object

40 Among many others, one could refer to David Paul Ausubel, The Acquisition and Retention of Knowledge: A Cognitive View (Dordrecht; London: Springer, 2011) and M. Sera and A. Martin, “Developmental Relationships between Language and Cognition,” in Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (Second Edition), ed. Keith Brown (Oxford: Elsevier, 2006), 491–500. 60 studied and other objects. The ambiguity of the use of rapports here points us to a mode of understanding that is figural and not easily expressed in literal language. Perhaps for us to understand something we need to know how the object interacts with other objects in the world. In this case, Buffon would be making a claim against innate ideas and emphasizing that all of our knowledge of the world is mediated by the senses and that we must record the interaction of one thing with another in our minds to begin to understand the object of study. This interpretation may be strengthened when one considers the progressive nature of knowledge that Buffon represents in this model. The progress of knowledge is at its very beginning with naming (les choses ne sont encore rien lorsquelles ont un nom), and then knowledge begins to form a representational solidity when the links, relations, and interactions are known to us (elles commencent à exister pour nous lorsque nous leur connaissons des rapports). This model of progressive understanding indicates that there is still more to come for this object fully to exist for us.

For the Histoire naturelle, knowledge does not exist without a knowing subject capable of attaching a name to the object and perceiving some relationship between this object and previously acquired knowledge. Existence of the object is predicated on the subjects ability to represent the object in a cognitive framework of relation.

The Histoire naturelle creates a complex mental object from the fusion and separation of description and history, language that points to the tangible and a context that defines the objects place in the world and relation to human beings. To conduct this advancement of truth, the Histoire naturelle pairs one text of description with one text of history.

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We should take a moment to understand history as the concept is being used by

Buffon in the eighteenth century. In the entry for “Histoire” in the Dictionnaire de lAcadémie française (1694, first edition), we read, “Narration des actions & des choses dignes de mémoire.”41 The definition places emphasis on narration with the criterion that the items related be “worthy of memory.” We note that the value judgment of worthiness is entirely in the realm of the subjective. However, in the Encyclopédies entry on

“Histoire” we find an emphasis on truth, “le récit des faits donnés pour vrais; au contraire de la fable, qui est le récit des faits donnés pour faux.”42 The more specific entry for

“Histoire Naturelle” in the Encyclopédie gives the vast scope of the subject and defines good descriptive practice:

Lobjet de lHistoire naturelle est aussi étendu que la nature; il comprend tous les êtres […] LHistoire naturelle, dans toute son étendue, embrasseroit lunivers entier, puisque les astres, lair & les météores sont compris dans la nature comme le globe terrestre.

La description des productions de la nature fait la base de son histoire; […] Il y a deux sortes de descriptions; les unes sont incomplettes, & les autres sont complettes. Dans les premieres, on na pour but que de caractériser chaque chose au point de la faire distinguer des autres: cette description nest quune dénomination, le plus souvent fort équivoque […] Les descriptions complettes expriment tous les objets en entier; & non seulement elles les font reconnoître sans équivoque, mais elles indiquent les rapports qui se trouvent entre leurs parties constituantes.43

41 Académie française, Dicionnaire de lAcadmie franaie. Tome premier, A-L (Paris: Coignard, 1694).

42 Encyclopédie, 8:220. 43 Encyclopédie, 8:225-26. 62

The anonymous author of this entry also adds an explanation of how both observers and admirers contribute to the cultivation of this knowledge: ,44

De tous ceux qui travaillent à lHistoire naturelle, ou qui soccupent de ces matériaux, les uns observent les productions de la nature & méditent sur leurs observations: leur objet est de perfectionner la science & de connoître la vérité; les autres recueillent ces mêmes productions de la nature & les admirent: leur objet est détaler toutes ces merveilles, & de les faire admirer. Ceux - ci contribuent peut-être autant à lavancement de lHistoire naturelle que les premiers, puisquils rendent les observations plus faciles en rassemblant les productions de la nature dans ces cabinets.45

In the early volumes of the Histoire naturelle, the description is written by

Daubenton while the history is given by Buffon, in entirely separate entries. Indeed, as seen below (Figure 1.1 and Figure 1.2), each is given a separate table of contents, which we can now comment on more fully. Why insist on such separation when the texts are conceived from the outset as partners in the same project, to be bound together in the same printed object?

44 The entry “Nature” was to have been written by Buffon, but due to a disagreement between Buffon and the encyclopedists, Buffon withdrew his participation. 45 Encyclopédie, 8:225-26. 63

Figure 1.1 and Figure 1.2. Side by side comparison of the table of contents pages for Buffon and Daubentons contributions to Tome 4 of the Histoire naturelle. (HN 4:iii–iv)

The tension between two approaches to the work of writing natural history is evident from the beginning, that is to say, from the table(s) of contents, as we saw in the introduction to this chapter. The volumes of the Histoire naturelle contain two separate tables of contents, often on separate pages: one for Buffons contributions, and one for those of Daubenton. Here we have Buffon contributing an entry on each animal, and

Daubenton contributing a separate entry for the same animal. Logically, based on the visual layout and sequence of the table of contents, one might expect the first half of the book to contain Buffons contributions and the second half those of Daubenton. 64

However, their entries are interspersed within the volume. Reading in sequence, one finds Buffons text followed immediately by Daubentons text, and then a third entry by

Daubenton cataloguing the contents of the royal collection [cabinet du roi] that relate to that particular specimen.

This separation of each entry for a single animal into three texts points to an uneasy truce among different ways of representing the animal. The Histoire naturelle as a whole combines or contains different rhetorical strategies but sustains tension among them by including them as completely separate texts. Each entry consists of a separate text for history which deploys narrative and invokes relationship, another text for systematic and ekphrastic description along with tables of numeric measurements, and yet another separate text for the catalog of the related items in the kings cabinet. The

Histoire naturelle presents the texts alongside each other, but without taking the editorial step to integrate them into one. However, the different texts do rely on and refer to each other.

Both Buffons history and Daubentons description draw upon the items in the kings cabinet as a corpus of specimens upon which to found their observations. The engraved illustrations are often made from a view of the physical sample of those specimens, often skeletons or preserved organs. Buffons text refers the reader to examples in Daubentons entries, and likewise Daubenton cites Buffons observations.

The texts work with each other, but in some tension. They do not resolve to a single unified text. For some reason, Buffon, as head of the project, kept them distinct.

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Buffon did at one time attempt to resolve the tension among the components of the entries. In 1767 he published, with the printer Panckoucke, an edition of the Histoire naturelle without Daubentons descriptions. However, subsequent editions reverted to including Daubentons descriptions.46 This may serve as proof that this work, as a whole, requires the balance of these different approaches in tandem. Perhaps a forensic study of some eighteenth-century examples of the Histoire naturelle would yield information about which pages received the most attention from readers (possibly from traces of oils from readers fingers or microscopic changes in pigment from exposure to light). I would wager that Daubentons descriptions, particularly the pages of measurements, received less reader attention than other portions of the Histoire naturelle since the tables cannot be read in a linear fashion as narration or even description without a highly elevated effort of interpretation. And yet, they are somehow essential to the balance and function of the Histoire naturelle as a whole.

46 For more on the reception of the Histoire naturelle and its many editions and compilations, see Louise Robbins, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002) 170–76. 66

Figure 1.3 Source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France Figure 1.3. Example of one of Daubentons table of comparative anatomy measurements (HN 5:30)

I propose several reasons why these tables of measurement serve an essential function for the Histoire naturelle. The first reason is that they create a foundation of empirical observation for the volumes. There are so many pages of measurements that it is impossible not to see them even if only casually perusing the volumes. No reader could ignore that the text offers an invitation to independent verification by anyone with a measuring device. The mere fact that the measurements are laid out in clear tables makes

67 it a simple affair to compare Daubentons results with ones own. To offer this vulnerability to criticism is both to invite that criticism and to proclaim a stance of assuredness regarding the accuracy of Daubentons data.

A second reason these tables are essential is that they create a third type of page in the Histoire naturelle: text, illustration, and table. This creates a third trajectory through the experience of the animal for the reader — a passage of an entirely different kind. The page of tabular data, however, presents a unique experience of reading. Simply put, it is not “readable” as a linear phrase; it interrupts and requires a different sort of mental processing. The table requires a spatial form of interpretation to make any sense of it.

The reader must create a mental orientation with regard to the column headers and row categories. One must keep in mind the gradation and different scale of the units for the three numeric columns. In order to interpret the page of data, one must create a mental image referring back to a visual either from previous personal experience or from one of the illustrations in the Histoire naturelle, invoking a figural element to the reading of these pages.

A third essential function I posit for these tables is to create an effect of truth and orderliness. The very unreadability of the page repulses all but the most determined reader. Can we imagine any but the most determined anatomist reading these pages in their entirety? For this reason we may claim that, in addition to the reasons given above, these pages exist to create an effect – to create an impression or a secular enchantment of truth and order. The majority of readers will peruse these pages, receive the impression of a stable, orderly world wherein all creatures can be compared with each other in a

68 network of similarities, and move on to the other entries in the Histoire naturelle. I suspect that for most readers, these pages are processed more as an image than as distinct phrases to be read. Daubentons work here instrumentalizes knowledge of the animals; the measurements can be used by anyone involved in animal husbandry to assess an individual animal against a set of norms or to create goals for a breeding program to generate larger, stronger, more productive farm animals. These table pages also serve to contextualize that knowledge, and to generate the effect on the readers that the text they are reading frames the world in stability and orderliness. With the knowledge gained from this work, humans might come to greater mastery over the creatures of nature and their productions.

In considering how to master and possess nature accurately through writing,

Buffon weighs concerns for distinguishing humankinds role in altering animals in his representation. He attempts to capture both the domesticated and unaltered essence of those animals, as well as address metaphysical questions of divine creation, purpose, and ontological hierarchy brought up by the relationship of human and animal. To the degree that humans interaction with the animal in question, there are degrees of mastery over the animal. In domesticated animals, this mastery takes the form of putting those animals to work for human society. In the case of undomesticated animals, the knowledge may provide mastery over how to avoid or mitigate the possible risks from encounter with those animals. Writing this knowledge is required to possess it in a durable, transmissible form. This more powerful form of possession in a collective format places human beings in a unique position to continue and improve this mastery of nature.

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As laid out in the “Premier discours”, the authors have organized their writing on animals according to an anthropocentric schema, starting at those with which humans are most familiar and ending with those that are least familiar. The first category is domestic animals, and Buffon describes the relationship to humans in a brief explanatory text. In this passage Buffon establishes a parallel between the Creator and humankind where God is master of entire species and humans achieve mastery only over specific individual animals or plants. It is indeed this subjugation of domesticated animals that complicates the task of the natural historian, confusing the animals wild nature with its tamed habits.

“Lhomme change létat naturel des animaux en les forçant à lui obéir, & les faisant servir à son usage” (HN 4:169). Therefore the goal of a competent naturalist must be to observe animals, particularly domesticated animals, well enough to “distinguer les faits qui dépendent de linstinct, de ceux qui ne viennent que de léducation […] & ne jamais confondre lanimal avec lesclave, la bête de somme avec la créature de Dieu” (HN

4:169). Here, Buffon employs the rhetorical figure of chiasmus to represent creatures such as horses, donkeys, and oxen as beginning and ending as animals and creations of

God [lanimal, la créature de Dieu], while in between they suffer as slaves and beasts of burden for humans [lesclave, la bête de somme]. The subtle counter-pairing in the chiastic structure separates the more highly charged elements, but encourages the readers consideration of the opposition lesclave - la créature de Dieu. Yet Buffon is far from becoming the first animal-rights activist as he writes in the next paragraph that “lempire de lhomme sur les animaux est un empire légitime quaucune révolution ne peut détruire, cest lempire de lesprit sur la matière” (HN 4:170). Perhaps responding to the

70 mind/body split of Descartes cogito,47 Buffon continues: “il pense, & dès-lors il est maître des êtres qui ne pensent point.” Without disavowing God, Buffon employs

Cartesian dualism to separate the spiritual and material domains in order to create a space for exacting description and faithful history that is under the domination of humankind, that is to say, of those beings who are capable of thought. Buffons text in this passage suggests that because the mind (lesprit) and thought (la pensée) are a gift from God and the superiority of spirit over matter is a right of nature, this utilitarian clarity is sustained.

“Auparavant lhomme était peut-être lanimal le plus sauvage & le moins redoutable de tous […] Mais lorsquavec le temps lespèce humaine sest étendue, multipliée, répandue,

& quà la faveur des arts & de la société lhomme a pu marcher en force pour conquérir lUnivers” (HN 4:173). The first of these conquests that Buffon and Daubenton will record for LHistoire naturelle is of the animal they claim is most familiar and most associated with humankind – the horse.

Beginning with the horse and continuing through most of the animals described, the authors present their three separate entries as we have discussed: Buffons history,

Daubentons description, and usually a description of the related items from the collection of the king. Here, in volume 4 regarding the horse, we have roughly eighty pages of Buffons anthropomorphizing literary text, then more than one hundred pages of

Daubentons separate description of the horse and details of its anatomy, followed by

47 René Descartes famous declaration, “je pense donc je suis,” which he later reiterated in Latin, “cogito ergo sum” [I think therefore I am], is a key to his meditation on the dual nature of mind and body in 17th-century French philosophy. See Descartes, Discours de la méthode, part 4. 71

Daubentons “Description de la partie du Cabinet qui a rapport à lHistoire naturelle du

Cheval.” Interspersed among the pages are ten engraved illustrations of the horse, its skeletal structure, and its organ systems.

Le Cheval (Buffon) “La plus noble conquête que lhomme ait jamais faite est celle de ce fier et fougueux animal qui partage avec lui les fatigues de la guerre & la gloire des combats”

(HN 4:174). Thus begin the roughly two hundred pages of text the Histoire naturelle devotes to the horse, the first and most privileged animal of the project. As such, Buffon and Daubentons entries on the horse have received important scholarly attention. As

Stalnaker demonstrates, Daubentons devotion to consistency and system ultimately lead to measuring specimens in artificially extended poses in order to create universal comparisons, where Buffons method allowed him greater freedom to describe each specimen in its natural context.48

The fact that the entry “Cheval” is divided into three separate texts and multiple image types points to different purposes and approaches to representing the animal within this same project. In this first entry, written by Buffon, we see the horse depicted as both partner and obedient servant to humankind.

[A]ussi intrépide que son maitre, le cheval voit le péril & laffronte, il se fait au bruit des armes, il laime, il le cherche & sanime de la même ardeur […] mais docile autant que courageux, il ne se laisse point emporter à son feu, il sait réprimer ses mouvemens, non seulement il fléchit sous la main de celui qui le guide, mais il semble consulter ses désirs, & obéissant toûjours aux impressions quil en reçoit, il se précipite,

48 Stalnaker, “Chapter 1: Buffon and Daubentons Two Horses,” in Unfinished Enlightenment, 31-67. 72

se modère ou sarrête, & nagit que pour y satisfaire ; cest une créature qui renonce à son être pour nexister que par la volonté dun autre.49

A brief inventory of the adjectives applied to the horse reveals qualifiers such as noble, fier, fougueux, intrepide, docile, courageux, and horses are said to possess mr doce and qualités sociales.50 Whether by nature or though long association with humans, the horse is represented as an intelligent and social creature in Buffons text through the use of anthropomorphic, figurative terms. These descriptions of the horses behaviors and implied motives come prior to any sort of physical description of the animal. The text fixes the animal for study by staging how it relates to people and what emotional resonance might be recognized by a human observer, before the text attempts the material description.

The reason for this sequence is to give order and structure to the “univers” being recorded. The first animal described is positive in relation to humans. The reader sees a world ordered in such a way that humankind has the apex position and the first animals described in closest proximity indicate complex and positive possibilities for humankinds “mastery and possession” of the general rules of the physical world and the creatures that inhabit it. With this positive established, Buffon then complicates this utilitarian notion with a caution to the responsibilities humans bear in exerting their dominion.

Indeed, the first mention of equine anatomy here is the series of wounds the animal commonly suffers from the implements used to harness and direct it; “la bouche

49 HN 4:174. 50 HN 4:174 and 177. 73 est déformée par les plis que le mors a produits, les flancs sont entamés par des plaies, ou sillonnés de cicatrices faites par léperon; la corne des pieds est traversée par des clous,” etc. (HN 4:175). The human subject who inflicts these “cruel marks” is twice removed in the text; the verbs are all set in the passive voice (e.g., the mouth is deformed) and the agent relayed by the passive verb is in each case the tool (the bit or the spur), a dispassionate metonymic stand-in for the rider or owner using it to goad the horse or adapt it for use. Yet the painful nature of these actions is communicated forcefully by the lexicon of torture: “déformé,” “entamé par des plaies,” “sillonné de cicatrices,” “traversé par des clous.” Here Buffons text creates a tense resonance between vivid presence and abstract absence. As a reader, we are confronted by the powerful and painful language of this physical description of the animal marred by injuries, and the reader is also abstractly aware that human ownership is the cause of these injuries. The text does not then recommend some alternate methods for training, guiding, or riding horses, and therefore does not perform an explicit criticism of these practices. The reader navigates an understanding of “horse” in this passage that has focused our attention atypically not on the generic idea of horse as other natural histories have done, but on an idea of horse as changed by human ownership, by human use. Buffon has shifted from detailed observation of the particular to a general history. The zone of tension between the negative specifics of the wounds and the abstract of human ownership is left open. The text stages both and does not resolve the unpleasant aspect. The dissonance invites our reflection, permitting (or perhaps requiring) readers to seek their own resolution as an after-effect of the text. This rhetorical tension creates in the reader a complex and multi-

74 dimensional response that requires figural processing and reflection. Our engagement with the issue is heightened by Buffons initial portrayal of the noble quality of the horse at the beginning of this entry.

“La plus noble conquête que lhomme ait jaimais faite est celle de ce fier et fougueux animal” (HN 4:174) is how Buffon opens the first paragraph of his history of the horse. After 21 lines of tight, active text Buffon concludes, “Voilà le cheval,” homophonically invoking a visual representation with the term vois-là. In between we have a passage studded with verbs rather than the expected nouns and adjectives, narrating the horse through action instead of physical description. In this passage the horse takes action and a certain understanding of the horse takes shape. Buffon writes the passage almost entirely with present tense verbs; the horse itself is the agent. The horse shares, loves, seeks out, doesnt let itself get carried away, yields, precipitates, moderates, renounces, feels, doesnt refuse, serves, outdoes itself, dies, and obeys. Observe that these verbs denote agency and intelligence. Buffon imputes these motivations directly to the animal; in only one case does he mitigate agency by writing that the animal seems to perform an action. In that one instance, the phrase “il semble consulter ses désirs” refers to the semblance of communication between horse and human, the possessive “ses referring to the desires of the rider. With the exception of this one case where literal communication could not actually be observed, Buffon describes a horse endowed with agency and self-directed activity. However, this agency sacrificed or surrendered by the horse is what elevates the animal to noble status.

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In this history of the horse, Buffon writes a timeless description of what the horse, in human domestication, does. This narration does not trace an evolution over time, but gives the relationship without temporal markers, written only in present tense verbs. He writes that the horse performs all these actions in timeless obedience rendered by the present participle, “obéissant toujours.” I suggest that we can divide this passage on the horse into three parts. Each section describes a different aspect of the life of a domesticated horse. In the first, the horse shares the fatigues and glories of war; in the second the horse shares humankinds pleasures of hunts, tournaments, and races; the third section describes how the horse restrains itself in service to humans. This last section is the longest of the three and culminates in the horses ability to sacrifice its own life in obedience.

One remarks throughout this passage the presence of many reflexive forms (se fait, se laisse, se précipite, se modère, sarrête, etc.) and also many direct object pronouns placed before verbs (laffronte, laime, le cherche, la prévenir, lexprime, lexécute, etc.).

Both these forms demonstrate a specific relationship between the verb and its object.

Where simple French syntax would place the object after the verb, both of these forms shift a very short placeholder for the object in front of the verb. It is almost a sort of rhetorical bridle on the verb, a powerful lever to control the verbs action. To read these forms requires a sort of mental dressage on the part of the reader to place what normally follows the verb in front of it instead, changing an organic order and natural tendency.

Here Buffons text represents its object in a rhetorical doubling. Domesticated horse and domesticated verb are controlled and forced to jump as writer/rider demand. This

76 passage also can be read as an analogue to a reader organizing knowledge. As such, we exert control to accept (se fait), to search (se précipite), to set limits (sarrête) as we act on the cognitive object to change it (saffronte).

Where Buffons text employs figural elements to communicate certain truths about the animal, Daubentons text operates on a more literal basis. Daubentons entries do not engage the relationship between human and animal with as much pathos as

Buffons. While Buffon has stated that the Histoire naturelle must include both history and description, the reader must wonder, on some level, why there exists another entirely separate entry on the same animal. I posit that the experience of Daubentons description of the horse supplements Buffons history of the horse to create for the reader a multi- dimensional representation of the animal. A second (or third) unique text to read creates a new trajectory through the same territory, this time with a more dispassionate view. It must be emphasized that organizing these texts such that each is a new, separate text means that these separate readings must now be placed in association with each other by the reader. The reader must triangulate among the multiple representations of the animal to assimilate this new knowledge and to process the instrumentalization and re- contextualization (or disenchantment and re-enchantment). This triangulation resolves and creates meaning incompatible with any one single discursive claim to truth in the text, and thus must be understood figurally as truth gestured to and experienced rather than stated.

Le Cheval, Again (Daubenton) Daubentons text is the second of the three texts comprised by the entry on the horse in the Histoire naturelle. Drier in tone, it begins with an explanation of his method 77 of description (head, then body, then extremities), then continues with how that differs from previous work, and finally proceeds to the actual descriptive passages. At times, the descriptions heavily reference the engraved illustrations which are found in the pages of

Daubentons entry. Those images of the live animal or dissected parts feature a letter key to index the various animal features about which Daubenton and Buffon write. The descriptions include several different terms that are in use for the various parts of equine anatomy. For example, “On appelle x, y, ou z la partie formée par …” The neutral pronoun “on” is used extensively, as is the passive voice, lending Daubentons text a distant, removed feel. The reader is encountering knowledge approved by the community of savants, and learning the terms they use. Daubentons phases pointing out the variability of language used by different groups of people to describe the same part of an animal is a subtle way of shifting the basis for knowledge to the material and the empirical. The words of the nomenclateurs vary; the reality is what Daubenton and

Buffon give in the Histoire naturelle.

Daubentons entry begins on a verso page, offering a complete separation from

Buffons text. The reader turns the page from Buffons text to view Daubentons beginning a new spread, though with a light bleed through of the half-page (large) floral printers ornament from the end of Buffons entry. Daubentons entry is separate, but subtly infringed by a ghosted reminder of Buffons text, graphically asserting dominance over the new text.

In the Histoire naturelle, the use image does not merely assert a ghostly watermark of authority; the many plates of engraved illustrations also convey information

78 about the configuration, shape, and relation of anatomical features of the animals that would be nearly impossible to portray in words.

The critical function of images in eighteenth-century writing is not to be underestimated. Alan Charles Kors notes the double role illustrations played in many

Enlightenment works: “Whether used with literary, scientific, or childrens educational texts, book illustrations gave visual form and a persuasive reality to fictional characters and to scientific or instructional material.”51 Diderot described the efficiency of the visual support in his Prospectus to the Encyclopédie: “Un coup dœil sur lobjet ou sur sa représentation en dit plus quune page de discours.” However, what is perhaps more important about the need for illustrations is given by Diderot earlier in that passage:

“Mais le peu dhabitude quon a et décrire et de lire les écrits sur les arts rend les choses difficiles à expliquer dune manière intelligible. De là naît le besoin des figures.”52 Due to human limitations in communicating by text about complex subjects, illustrations are not just helpful, they are a necessity. In the case of the Histoire naturelle, I propose that we can productively read the illustrations by attending to the tension between experience and information, as we will see by analyzing the illustrations accompanying the section on the horse.

51 Kors offers a compact and useful summary of the state of illustration under “Illustrators and Illustrations” in his Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), https://doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780195104301.013.0336. 52 Denis Diderot, “Prospectus,” in “Front Matter,” University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 Edition), Robert Morrissey and Glenn Roe eds, http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/, 4. 79

Figure 1.4. Jean-Charles Baquoy after a design by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Engraved illustration of the horse (HN 4:366), 1753, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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The first plate in the series of illustrations of the horse (p. 366 and following) is a full-body depiction of a standing horse, engraved by Jean-Charles Baquoy after a drawing by Jean-Baptiste Oudry. The horses figure can be taken to stand for both the domesticated animal and the wild creature. Thus, it represents one of the primary difficulties presented by the domesticated quadrupeds for Buffon and Daubenton – the need to show both states of the animal and discern the differences brought about by human intervention. The image represents the animal with an ambiguous demeanor, conveying a subtle sense of menace. At first glance, the horse appears fairly neutral in stance and appearance, almost standing still and presented from profile. However, a closer examination of the image reveals subtle signs of aggression. The horses eye seems to fix the viewer in a gaze that is somehow intense and possibly threatening, thus drawing the reader in to interpret the animals demeanor in order to evaluate the threat.

The horses eye is rendered slightly widened as if the animal has just perceived a threat located at the same position in space as the viewer. The horses ears are up and alert, which can be a sign of vitality or alarm. While the body of the animal seems at first to be presented in profile perpendicular to the viewers gaze, closer attention reveals it to be slightly angled, or in the process of angling, toward the viewer. The animals head is foreshortened somewhat, giving an impression that it is turning toward us. The mouth does not display teeth agressively, but seems almost to frown or display displeasure.

While the other three legs are straight, the horses right rear leg is lifted as if pawing the soil. This stance both intimates the possible threat of a horse about to charge and also exhibits the unique articulation of a horses leg in the z-shape that is most different from

81 that of a human being. This positioning calls attention to a key difference in anatomy, comparing the horse to the human as the point of reference for the work. This stance mid- movement also allows the engraver, Baquoy, to depict the unique musculature and shape of the horses rear leg joints. Taken together, these elements allow us to read the image on two levels; on an informational level, which gives a sense of the general shape, scale, and features of a horse; and on a narrative level where the reader is almost unconsciously provoked to pay attention to a large animal showing small signs of nascent menace. The sense of menace creates an engagement for the reader on the narrative level that is hard to avoid. As we shall see, illustrations in other similar works of natural history function on the informational level as diagram, but did not succeed in creating the narrative, esthetic engagement that this image does. These other approaches often represent the general, abstract animal. One sees what could be the idea of a horse or oxen; there is information but little in the way of narrative experience. The illustrations of the other animals in the

Histoire naturelle are consistent in this creative process. In similar fashion, the other animal illustrations in the Histoire naturelle manufacture some kind of narrative experience for the reader-viewer, though not necessarily including the element of danger seen here.

Following the way a typical viewer might describe this image, we turn next to the background and technical features of the engraving, focusing our attention and interpretive process on first the most prominent visual features, then to less prominent features. We then perceive that the image of the horse is contained in a double border frame. The top of the image showcases the skill of the engraver with perfect parallel

82 lines with a fade in the center. This area of shading does not portray the natural world otherwise figured in the image, but instead betrays the art and artificiality of the representation.

The horse is shown standing on a patch of ground with minimal vegetation, and in the background are some buildings of a small town or perhaps a walled château. The horse is shown in relation to human habitation and possibly in association with nobility because the buildings shown in the background are a walled fortress with single château enclosed, not a city or a country hamlet. The horse is depicted without saddle or bridle, as an animal whose domesticated status is ambiguously implied by the buildings in the background. The animal is large, taking up most of the frame. By the work of perspective, the implied viewer is on lower ground and looking up slightly at the horse, which again emphasizes the power and potential menace of the horse who holds the upper ground. While there are several millimeters of space between the nearly vertical back leg of the horse and the right framing border, the nose of the horse is very close to the left frame, almost threatening to break free from the space in a forward motion that could bring it closer to the reader.

The informational/diagrammatic function of this plate is minimized to lessen the disruption to the viewers experience.53 Capital letters closely surround the outline of the horse, clustered mainly around the head and then following the curve of the animals

53 For an in-depth discussion of the function of diagram as a “thinking tool” with particular reference to the plates of the Encyclopédie, see John Bender and Michael Marrinan, The Culture of Diagram (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.

83 back, serving as the references in the textual descriptions. The letters are small enough that they trouble only slightly the overall artistic impression of the image. Contrast this with the illustration from Louis Ligers work [Figure 1.5] where the numeric legends are made clearly visible in the negative space near the frame, connected to the animal by bold curved lines. I propose that we read significance into the relative placement of these legends. The legends in the Histoire naturelle closely follow the specimen observed, clustering together or spaced widely as are the features being commented; whereas in

Ligers work, the legends cling to the artificial border, spaced evenly by the artists design. Thus it may be argued that in both placement and spacing the legends implement their different approaches. For the Histoire naturelle, the observations are based directly on the specimen, not on the observers pre-conceived concept of how to represent it. We will return to a longer examination of Ligers work shortly. For the moment, let us continue with our analysis of the Histoire naturelles horse.

The horses coat is dappled or mottled with dark markings on a white background.

The dark markings are a severe contrast to the rest of the image. The mottling brings the raw animality and physicality of the specimen to the fore, distinguishing this image from a softer narrative of the horse as beautiful, glorious actor in a history genre painting. The mottling almost seems diseased and invites the reader to examine the image in closer detail to resolve the slightly unsettling appearance. This suggests to us that there are two readings at work here; one mimetic and the other diegetic.54 The artists present us with a

54 On the opposition of the mimetic and the diegetic, see Eric Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton 84 horse that seems to be drawn from a scene in real life. Oudry and Baquoys attention to detail, scale, and minor elements lend an air of realism to the illustration. Thus we see what the image “shows” us, and we also enter into a diegetic reading of what the image

“tells us” about the horse and knowledge.

Figure 1.5 Illustration of le boeuf from Ligers 1749 Nouvelle maison rustique. Image source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

If we compare the illustrations in the Histoire naturelle with illustrations found in other similar contemporary works, such as Louis Ligers 1749 edition of Nouvelle maison rustique,55 we find that the production values are much greater in the engravings of the

University Press, 1953), and his chapter, “Figura” in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984) 9–76. 55 Buffon refers to Ligers treatise on livestock and agriculture in the footnotes of the Histoire Naturelle entry for “Le Boeuf.” Louis Liger, La nouvelle maison rustique, ou Économie générale de tous les biens de la campagne, 6th ed. (Paris: Saugrain fils, 1749), 1:306. 85

Histoire naturelle. Where Ligers illustrations are primarily relief engraving woodcuts, the Histoires involve the intaglio process, engraved on copper plates, which allows for finer and closer lines than is possible when working with a wood matrix. Ligers animal images are generic and as broadly representative as possible; the plates in Buffons work strive to navigate between the general and the particular by presenting a particular variety of the animal and in a particular spatial context. Furthermore, the Histoire naturelles animal illustrations sometimes engage the viewer through an artistic rendering that works to create some narrative, as the subtle menace of the horse does.

Where other contemporary works might emphasize the images utility, this work reinvests the diagram with a narrative, with a degree of artistic rendering that communicates both information and the pathos that draws the viewer into an experience of the moment or a feeling. The illustrations reveal a tension between information and experience that is also echoed in the text of the entries of the Histoire naturelle. The tension is between disenchantment and re-enchantment. It is demonstrated perhaps most strikingly in the plates, however, where this tension serves to deliver knowledge that is shaped differently than what was perceived in previous representational schemes.

Additionally, we must recall that this representational scheme imbricates the knowledge in a framework of relationship centered on the human, giving things their place and value in an order the reader must interpret and internalize for him- or herself. The natural knowledge of the Histoire naturelle is given structure and value in the mind of the reader through the active interpretation vitalized by a tension between the utilitarian and contextualization, between disenchantment and re-enchantment.

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Conclusion The desire to instrumentalize and distribute knowledge of the natural world in the eighteenth century gave rise to multiple ambitious projects of encyclopedic scope.

Recording this knowledge in a form apt to communicate to others and to future generations generated problems for those individuals who undertook the challenge.

These problems ranged from material to epistemological to organizational.

The encounter between knowledge and the page to contain it raised tensions underlying the culture and discourse of Enlightenment in eighteenth-century France. In the effort to separate savoir from its supernatural entanglements, writers used several different strategies. Clarity and utility found support from text that emphasized the empirical evidence of the senses, and from measurement, particularly when organized on the page in a way that appeared to claim no rhetorical force, such as tables of numbers.

Visual representation stripped away context to present only one system of organs on a plane of white space separated from the animal to stand in place of direct observation.

If we were to consider only these elements of siècle des Lumières knowledge projects, we could be persuaded that this era was indeed well characterized as the Age of

Reason. However, as we examine works such as the Histoire naturelle and the others in the following chapters by attending to the tension between pairs of concepts central to the texts, we begin to see a different story of the French Enlightenment. For paired with the génie of detail, we find the génie of the grand view; telling the story of système, we find sentiment. The grand knowledge projects of the French Enlightenment holistically allied a move to clarify with a move to contextualize within the human framework. The 87 creative work of fiction or visual art invites a figural re-conceptualization to replace the familiar networks of associations stripped away in the move to “disenchant” the world.

Contemporary readers may see Buffon and Daubentons Histoire naturelle as a partial, imperfect, or nascent scientific work, but this viewpoint from modern science judges from its own epistemic moment and risks disregarding the different work undertaken in

1742. Regarding this work simply as recording information to instrumentalize the natural world neglects the re-enchantment operated by literary device. Not only did Buffon and

Daubenton produce useful knowledge about the specimens studied, they also produced a different way to think about and relate to this knowledge. Ordering the animal specimens from “most familiar to humankind” to “least familiar” produced a figural scaffolding for knowledge similar to that of the Encyclopédie with the human subject at the center. And yet, this structure is recognized in both texts as being arbitrary. In striking contrast to prior views, both projects reject as unknowable any sort of universal, absolute true order.

Since such an order is classed as metaphysical for both, the authors dispense with having to contend with one or defend the lack of it and are free to select a useful scheme among all valid arbitrary schemes.

With the potentially unnerving affirmation that all knowledge is pinned to arbitrary schemes of organization, the authors work with literal and figural discourses, including anthropomorphism, metaphor, and other devices, to write humanity into the fabric of this new knowledge. They write in ways to create an experience of knowledge.

The reader is displaced and repositioned through the experience of text and the visual not just to change the content of knowledge, but also to change the thinking subject itself.

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The text invites the reader to experience a relationship to the world in a manner that invites question, critique, and individual confirmation. But if this world is emptied of the divine, it is recreated in vividly human terms; it is re-enchanted with a sense of our place in the world and a significance that is derived from a chain of similarity to the other living creatures as manifested in compared anatomy and compared social traits.

89 Chapter Two Pastoral novel as re-draft of encyclopedic project: Paul et Virginie as conclusion to Bernardin de Saint-Pierres Études de la nature

Pie je i n dan n monde o on epoe la i e o on acceille le fictions, tirons parti de celle de mes enfants adoptifs, en faveur de mes propres enfants. (Préambule de Paul et Virginie, 36).

In 1784 naturalist, military engineer, spy, and writer Jacques-Henri Bernardin de

Saint-Pierre hits a methodological stumbling block and publishes incomplete his encyclopedic natural history project, the Études de la nature.1 Four years later, he publishes it again, completed this time by an additional, final volume comprising a pastoral novel, Paul et Virginie, set on tropical Île de France (modern day Mauritius). A twenty-first-century reader may wonder how in the 1780s a novel can be said to complete a natural history project. This chapter is an exploration of the case of Paul et Virginie that focuses on examining how imagination and reason were mobilized in eighteenth- century French literature to create representations of truth.

Rife with knowledge projects, encyclopedia-writing, botanical book printing, travel accounts, and other scientific writing, the eighteenth century is marked by an explosion of empiricism and rational materialism. From the grand Encyclopédie to

Buffons Histoire naturelle, Condillacs Traité des sensations, and Diderots Lettre sur

1 Hereafter I will refer to this author as Saint-Pierre, contrary to the most common appellaion Benadin de Saint-Pierre. The aho actual birth name is Jacques- Bernardin-Henri de Saint-Pierre. In a strange instance of fiction changing reality, he recounts how a printers error switched his second and third names for the original edition of the Études de la nature. Due to the popularity of his text, he felt compelled to oblige the public and accept the name change. Préambule, in Paul et Virginie (Paris: Didot lan, 1806), xxxi. 90 les aveugles, we find writing that explains and advances an empirical foundation for understanding the world and its objects. It is not surprising then that many influential

Enlightenment scholars have focused on reason and materialism, or found them to be a defining characteristic of the writing of this period. Ernst Cassirer described the

Enlighenmen a a ale em ooed in aionali, and hioian Doinda Oam observed that previously historians of the period

thought of the Enlightenment as a relatively unitary phenomenon in the hio of idea () In hi inepeaion, Enlighenmen was a desire for human affairs to be guided by rationality rather than by faith, superstition, or revelation; a belief in the power of human reason to change society and liberate the individual from the restraints of custom or arbitrary authority; all backed up by a world view increasingly validated by science rather than by religion or tradition.2

Adorno and Horkheimer state things more succinctly: he pogam of he Enlighenmen was the disenchantment of the world: the dissolution of myths and the substitution of knoledge fo fanc.3 Scholars have depicted the writing of this period as a general movement to embrace a rational materialist explication of the world and to demystify knowledge of it. Yet a careful reading of several eighteenth-century texts where these clean narratives of interpretive protocol seem inadequate suggests there is more to the writing of this period.

As we saw in Chapter 1, Buffon translates the inventory of the Cabinet du Roi to the pages of the Histoire naturelle with empirical description and creative narrative.

Elsewhere, in Diderots Le rêve de dAlembert, explanation of cellular organization

2 Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 3. 3 See Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 253. 91 intermingles with risqué innuendo as Dr. Bordeu dialogues with dAlemberts mistress,

Julie de Lespinasse. If we were to read such texts as illustrations of the manifest rise of reason, how are we to understand the elements such as figurative language, stylistics, and form commonly associated with fictional texts that run counter to the straightforward demonstration of facts?4 The narrative that the Enlightenment was the Age of Reason does not account for this ambiguous discursive mixture. Indeed, this hybridity seems to be constitutive rather than incidental. In the epigraph to this chapter, we see Bernardin de

Saint-Pierre decrying the cold reception his contemporary society gives to truth, and how fictions are instead welcomed; Puisque je suis né dans un monde où on repousse la vérité et où on accueille les fictions, tirons parti de celle de mes enfants adoptifs, en faveur de mes propres enfants.5 The French demonstrative pronoun celle gie o hi proposition a productive polysemy in that the feminine pronoun can be read to refer to truth or fiction, which are both feminine in French. Saint-Pierre exhorts his reader to join him in taking advantage of (tirons parti de) either the truth or the fiction of his adopted children (the characters Paul and Virginie in his novel) in favor of his own children (also named Paul and Virginie). As the well-choen ambialence of he od celle pemi,

Saint-Pierre is in fact inviting us to take part in both truth and fiction to benefit future generations. Or rather, he is employing fiction as a vector to convey the experience of a

4 Wilda Anderson explores this eighteenth-century struggle to find language to describe scientific phenomena that is rhetorically persuasive all the while attempting to make invisible the rhetoric used to communicate it. Wilda Anderson, Between the Library and the Laboratory: The Language of Chemistry in Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984). 5 Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie, ed. Jean Ehrard (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 36. 92 certain mode of truth to his reader. I will return to this point below. In this chapter I will argue that the creative and performative operation of figural thinking is often employed by eighteenth-century French writers to render epistemologically transformative their texts of knowledge of the natural world. This chapter aims to examine the interpretive possibilities offered in reading eighteenth-century French texts, specifically Bernardin de

Saint-Pierres novel Paul et Virginie, through the tension between critical and creative strategies, considered through the theoretical framework of disenchantment and re- enchantment.6

Enchantment and Enlightenment The Oxford English Dictionary define enchan a he acion o ee magical influence upon; to bewitch, lay under a spell; also to endow with magical properties; to influence irresistibly or powerfully, as if by a charm; to hold spellbound or to delude; to attract, win over, compel or induce, as if by magic.

I popoe a moe nanced concepaliaion of e-enchanmen o eamine hi unstable amalgamation of materialist disenchantment and its opposite. To describe the concepts simply, disenchantment involves stripping away transcendental meaning(s) in favor of a purely materialist explanation for the natural world. Re-enchantment is then the re-encoding of such knowledge in a framework that either applies some new mystification, or points to a new ontology giving place, order, and a sense of relation in human terms.

6 See my chapter 1 for more ample discussion of the critical interventions around the dichotomy of disenchantment and re-enchantment. 93 Michael Saler and Joshua Landy have written about the tension between viewing the world on the one hand in a purely rational materialistic fashion, under the banner of disenchantment (with full credit to Max Weber),7 and on the other hand as the counter- reaction of rehabilitating a worldview to make room for mystery and transcendence under the banner of re-enchantment.8 In this theoretical binary, disenchantment is a move to remove fancy and error from knowledge to deliver that which is rational, routinely observable, and useful. In this sense, the initial project for Saint-Pierres Études de la nature (Studies of Nature) is a natural history project of demystification, in lineage from

Aristotle, Pliny, and Buffon and Daubentons immense contemporaneous Histoire naturelle (Natural History), mentioned obliquely in the Études a he ok of plusieurs modernes célèbres (several famous modern persons).9 Yet the Études as a demystification of nature includes its fair share of artful rhetoric.

In an age of colonization and exploration, producing useful knowledge and deciphering humankinds relationship to this new, changing world was an underlying preoccupation of French Enlightenment writers. Truth, as figured in the frontispiece to the Encyclopédie, is staged between the opposite actions of Reason and Imagination.

Reason first strips off the veil from Truth, and then Imagination re-clothes her with embellishments. Interestingly, while many of the recent critical inquiries that explore the

7 Ma Webe oe in hi 1918 ea Wienchaf al Bef (Science a a Vocaion) ha The fae of o ime i chaaceied b aionaliaion and inellecaliaion and, aboe all, b he dienchanmen of he old. Lece a Munich University, 1918 (Munich: Duncker & Humbolt, 1919), 16. 8 Joshua Landy and Michael T. Saler, The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). 9 Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Études de la nature, 3rd ed. (Paris: Didot le jeune, 1788), 1:1. Unless otherwise stated, all citations are from this edition. 94 idea of re-enchantment locate the origin of disenchantment in the eighteenth-century instrumentalizing of knowledge, most of them look to nineteenth-century works for re- enchantment, finding it in texts pointing to Romanticism, modern science, Mesmerism or even in the poetry of Mallarmé. Landy sees lucid self-delusion (a form of re- enchantment) as a key intuition at the center of his poetry: Fo Mallam, hee i nothing beyond the world we know [ ] yet at the same time, no escape from the need to beliee ha hee i omehing moe.10

As seen in previous studies of Enlightenment texts, such as that of Ernst Cassirer or the cultural historians Ehrard and Duchet, we have typically understood the

Enlightenment as movement of desacralization and secularization that is to say a movement of disenchantment of the material world by authors and intellectuals who strove to represent the world in a rational materialist discourse, relying exclusively on the evidence of the senses.11 Beginning with Friedrich Nietzsches passing use of the expression Gegen-Aufklärung (counter-enlightenment) in 1877, but more prominently after Isaiah Berlin 1973 ea on The Cone-Enlighenmen, other scholars have offered a counter-Enlightenment narrative that suggests the production of various forms of what could be called re-enchantment as the most apt perspective from which to

10 See Joshua Landy chape Moden Magic: Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin and Sphane Mallam in The Re-enchantment of the World, 125. 11 Some of he ciical ok ha hae helped define he Fench Enlighenmen include Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951), Jean Ehrard, LIdée de Nature en France dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N, 1963), and Michèle Duchet, Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des lumières (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995). 95 understand the notion of Enlightenment progress (consider Adorno and Horkheimers darker view of Enlightenment progress).12

One group of scholars rethinking the prevailing narratives of the French

Enlightenment is represented by the Super-Enlightenment project. Spearheaded by Dan

Edelstein, the group examined cases where intellectuals in the eighteenth century employed what could be called an Enlightenment-style critical approach to study and decibe mical phenomena. Edelein and colleage emed hi he Spe-

Enlighenmen. Thei collecie eeach pojec ecognie ha hermetic and

ordinary philosophers ofen haed an idenical epiemological fameok.13 That research focuses on what could be considered the mis-application of Enlightenment rational, critical thought processes to an inadmissible object the unobservable.

Edelsteins Super-Enlightenment project suggests that it is inadequate to view most texts of the siècle des Lumières as exhibiting exclusively either disenchantment or veiled re-enchantment. I pursue that argument here, showing that we can more fully appreciate these texts when they are seen as manifesting the conjoined operation of both.

The texts in our study perform critical work through the interaction of both processes.

These texts make claims about the organization and function of the natural world. The

12 Nieche e of he epeion i nde debae, appaenl occing onl in a notebook entry, published posthumously as part of the Nachgelassene Fragmente (Posthumous Fragments). Isaiah Berlin is credited with popularizing the idea in his essay Conter-Enlighenmen, eenall pblihed in Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas. (London: Hogarth Press, 1979), 1-32. 13 See the introduction to this compiled volume for an overview of the complementary and contradictory applications of Enlightenment principles and discourse during the eighteenth century. Dan Edelstein, ed. The Super-Enlightenment: Daring to Know Too Much (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2010), 6. 96 authors seek to enlighten, that is to say they aim to change the readers. This intent to effect change is often explicitly stated and stems from a desire to better the human condition. An author who admires wisdom uses words as tools to undo/destabilize an unhealthy fiction (disenchant). The unhealthy fiction is any accepted knowledge that is incorrect and deprives human beings of the ability to master and possess the natural world and their own lives. As philosophes and savants see a positive result from critical questions and investigations yielding new and particularly useful/instrumentalizable answers, the siècle des Lumières takes shape as a broader phenomenon. Writing a better future for humanity requires questioning, loosening the bonds of traditional knowledge, and forging a new understanding framed in a new world view (re-enchantment). The disenchantment/re-enchantment tension is an unstable but productive pairing found in eighteenth-century French writing.

When considering the opposition between disenchantment and re-enchantment, we encounter multiple analogous binary pairs in the writing of the eighteenth century.

These binaries include oppositionally-charged rhetorical poles like creative versus critical, vérité versus fiction, and in the particular case of Saint-Pierres writing, sentiment versus système. While it is tempting to try to map each of these pairs onto a basic binary of science versus literature, this gesture collapses meaningful differences between the rhetorical strategies in each specific pair. The operation of such pairs in eighteenth- century French writing, as we shall see, is not to privilege one category over the other, but rather to create something through an amalgamation of the two partners. This chapter is an exploration of the diversity and instability of one such amalgamation système and sentiment.

97 Paul et Virginie at the intersection of système and sentiment Paul et Virginie presents an unusual case of a core idea (the providence of nature) written about in three different genres by the same author. The textual trajectory begins in the travel account Voyage à lîle de France, revisits those natural observations in the

Études de la nature, and culminates in the pastoral novel Paul et Virginie, published as the final volume of the Études de la nature. The completion of a natural history work with a novel begs the question of how genre plays a role in shaping representation. In the present study, we are concerned with the alliance of critical and creative processes to instrumentalize and humanize knowledge of the observable world. In the texts we will analyze, the creative re-encoding of the world acknowledges a greater cosmos and human place in it; however, this re-encoding, o e-enchanmen effo, is focused on restructuring the cognitive manner of representation, rather than on appealing to a metaphysical reality. We will consider the novel Paul et Virginie as the culmination of a series of texts written in different genres by Saint-Pierre but on the same topic that, taken together, reveal the work of refiguring natural knowledge in terms of a tension between système and sentiment.

In order to understand how Paul et Virginie is a re-enchantment of the classificatory disenchantment of the Études de la nature, it is necessary to explicate the relationship between these two texts. Ambivalence about the utility and eloquence of representation is an enduring concern in eighteenth-century French texts, particularly those on the then-inchoate boundaries between the genres of natural history and literature. Certainly, one intriguing example of this ambivalence can be seen in the

Études de la nature. It is an encyclopedic project that the author first published in 1784

98 in incomplete form, after a being stymied by a methodological problem of accurate description. Four years later in 1788 Saint-Pierre published a third edition, curiously concluded with a novel, Paul et Virginie (Paul and Virginia).

Paul et Virginie in the context of Saint-Pierres other writing Saint-Pierre bluntly begins the third edition of his Études de la nature by stating that almost nothing has changed from the previous edition. Voici la oiime diion des Études de la nature, qui ne diffère presquen rien de la précédente, à lexception dun quatrième volume que j ai ajo (EN 1:i).14 The litotes of the opening line leaves the reader to wonder at the content of this entire fourth volume which is seemingly discarded a almo nohing [presque rien] by the author. With great rhetorical skill, the writer plays a shell game with the reader, hiding the valuable new content and misdirecting the reader to a short list of minor corrections and revised phrasings he has made to the first three volumes. This gambit increases the readers interest in this seemingly discounted fourth volume. In this manner Saint-Pierre sets the stage to regard the fourth volume, which comprises only works of fiction, as equivalent to the other three volumes.

Saint-Pierres quest in the Études de la nature to disenchant natural knowledge

(that is, to strip away supernatural explanations, relying on the evidence of the senses) for a study of nature, seems at odds then with his decision to conclude and complete the study with the beguiling power (and aesthetic re-enchantment) of that knowledge in the

14 Hee i he hid ediion of he Sdie of Nae, hich diffe in almo nothing from the preceding edition, with the exception of a fourth volume that I added to i. 99 form of a pastoral novel.15 And yet this gesture toward a different representational approach imbued his texts with an appeal and longevity difficult to account for based on content alone. Colas Duflo has suggested that today, as during the Age of Reason, nostalgia and longing for a sense of connection and purpose in the universe explain our continued attraction to these texts.

le succès des Études de la nature en leur temps et le plaisir quon peut encore éprouver à les lire aujourdhui ne tiennent-ils finalement au fait quelles décrivent dans un style somptueux une nature bienveillante, en rapport avec nous, un monde à notre mesure et qui nous convient? Ce succès et notre plaisir seraient alors le revers de la nostalgie dune nature évanouie dans le passé de lhistoire des idées révolues que la science et la philosophie désenchanteresses des modernes nous ont définitivement fait perdre.16

The novel Paul et Virginie is thus the culmination of multiple attempts (in multiple genres) to capture a certain kind of truth of his observations of his voyage to the

Île de France. From travel account to scientific treatise and finally to pastoral novel,

Saint-Pierre tried different genres to find the most fitting rhetorical tools to represent his observations of the world.

In Voyage à lÎle de France, his 1773 travel account of a three-year stay on Île de

France (now Mauritius) located off the east coast of Africa, Saint-Pierre describes a tension he senses in writing on natural history. "Jai cru y voir le caractère sensible dune providence; et jen ai parlé, non comme dun système qui amuse mon esprit, mais comme

15 Saint-Pierre lays out the scope and method of his project thus: Je fomai, il a quelques années, le projet dcie ne hioie gnale de la nae [] J ai employé à cette recherche toutes les forces de ma raison. Études de la nature, 1:1-2. 16 Colas Duflo, Le had e linscription, in Études de la nature, ed. Colas Duflo (Saint-Etienne: Publications de lUniversité de Saint-Etienne, 2007), 28. 100 dun sentiment dont mon c est plein."17 This short passage declares Saint-Pierres choice between two opposing approaches to natural history. On the one hand, he notes the tendency among the natural historians of his day to embrace the critical apparatus of a system which breaks down the natural world into categories and items for manipulation by the intellect; the other approach offers a manner of communication that re-encodes this providence as satiating sentiment. He has chosen to write about the observable traits of nature in the same manner as he would speak of a feeling of which his heart is full.18

Saint-Pierre rejects the mode of system-making which is the hallmark of many grand knowledge projects in Europe at the time from Linneaus to Pluche to the Encyclopédie.

Instead, he embraces a mode of communication that resonates with emotion, to speak of his subjec a of a feeling m hea i filled ih. The paage doe no ae ha nae is a sentiment, but rather that the author has chosen to forego representing nature as a system which is appealing to the mind, but ultimately seen as mere amusement. Instead, the author chooses to represent nature in a manner that is fulfilling and is comprehended by feelings rather than the intellect.

Paul et Virginie builds on this conceptual pairing of système and sentiment, transforming the inhospitable description of Île de France from the Voyage into the lush paradise home of the two children. Île de France as the setting for both texts indicates a certain relationship between those works, with the authors direct observations of the

17 Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Voyage à lîle de France: un officier du roi à lîle Maurice: 1768-1770, Yves Bénot, ed. (1773) (Paris: La Découverte, 1983), 26. 18 The cult of sensibilité that arose in the eighteenth century created an active readership and market for sentimental novels by authors such as Pierre de Marivaux, Abbé Prévost, and Samuel Richardson. See Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre. 101 Voyage providing a claim of authenticity for the narration of the novel. The publication of Paul et Virginie in the final tome of the Études de la nature requires us also to consider the nature of their connection. I argue that all three texts are attempts by the author to give an adequate representation of nature and humankinds relation to it, one that answers Saint-Pierres epistemological concern to balance instrumentalization against humanization. With the freedom to invent content and the persuasive tools of figurative language, the novel affords an author wide latitude to persuade through the readers imaginary experience of fiction. Paul et Virginie offers us a uniquely positioned text with which to examine the epistemological tension between système and sentiment.

The unexpected connection between scientific treatise and novel takes center stage in this discussion. In stating that Paul et Virginie was the conclusion to his unfinished Études de la nature, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre invites us to consider the articulation between these two works. In the foreword to Paul et Virginie, he writes that this work is to be considered part of, and the conclusion to, his Études de la nature. Ce quatrième volume renfeme de hioie [] Mais tout se tient dans la nature, et tout se

aemble dan de de.19 Jai donc compris ce faible essai sous le nom et à la suite de mes Études de la Nature.20 We are left to wonder how the creative fiction of the novel can be said to comprise part of a natural history, let alone to complete it.

If the aim of Saint-Pierres natural history is disenchantment, a move to shear away transcendent associations (superstition, tradition, etc.), in order to set the

19 Saint-Pierre, Études, 4: lxxx (80-81 of the Notice in Tome 4). 20 This rationale is found at the end of the long Avant-propos to the text of Paul et Virginie in the 1788 edition of Études de la nature. (Études 4: lxxxviii). 102 foundations of knowledge on a bedrock of rational materialism, then why would a writer risk using the tools of creative persuasion (in other words, fiction) to present that knowledge to others?21 The inherent falseness of fiction can lead one into error.

Representing that-which-is-not in a fashion that presents a semblance of realism creates the conditions of duplicity and falsehood, and thus risks being accused of artfulness of skillfully creating an illusion for the purpose of deceit.

Saint-Pierre wrote in his travel observations that nature was not something he could fully represent with an intellectual system, but rather that it was something to be put into words that are understood through sentiment. A close reading of system and sentiment functioning together in Saint-Pierres writing will help us not only appreciate the tension in this struggle in eighteenth-century thought, but also move beyond that to understand how system and sentiment work together to create a new epistemology.

Saint-Pierre observes nature as something to be written about not in terms of system, but in terms of a sentiment. However, Saint-Pierre does not write about sentiment strictly in the manner we would come to expect.22

Jen ai été si étonné moi-même, que jai cru long-temps que cétait moi, et non pas eux, qui avais perdu sur ce point le sentiment de lévidence. Je nosais même mouvrir à personne sur cet article, non plus que sur les autres objets de ces Études; car je nai presque rencontré dans le monde, que des hommes vendus aux systèmes qui ont fait fortune, ou à ceux qui la

21 Nichola Paige eamine he eolion of he Ween concep of ficion and its relation to truth in Before Fiction: The Ancien Régime of the Novel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 22 The study of sentimental fiction in the eighteenth century typically explores the role of empathy in the relation of a European reading subject to a distant and different ohe. Thi dnamic einfoce diincion inead of eaing i. In addition to our previous references on the sentimental novel, see also Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History, 1st ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2007), 20911. 103 fon faie. [] D ailleurs, comment raisonner avec des gens qui senveloppent dans des nuages déquations ou de distinctions métaphysiques, pour peu que vous les pressiez par le sentiment de la vérité? Si ces refuges leur manquent, ils vous accablent par les authorités innombrables qui les ont subjugués eux-mêmes, sans raisonner, et dont ils comptent bien subjuguer à leur tour.23

In this passage, Saint-Pierre attaches the term sentiment to the idea of evidence and truth, as proven by geometry and experiment. Then he goes on to decry the fact that those who have lost the sentiment of evidence are instead sold on systems taught in school. System thinking leads to blind acceptance, and likely error, while the sentiment of evidence is a personal approach to finding truth.24 Abstract theory, such as equations and metaphysics, distracts from truth and renders difficult the act of reasoned communication with others. Saint-Pierre insists twice in the above passage that reasoning with people of this mindset is not possible. In some sense, distancing knowledge of nature from the act of experiencing nature is disenchanting. Removing the sensorial element (évidence) from observational experience displaces knowledge from the realm of sentiment and the figural and into the domain of pure intellect and the discursive. For Saint-Pierre there is a fundamental disconnect between these two modes of encoding and representing knowledge, to the point where a person representing knowledge in one mode finds it impossible to communicate reasonably with a person relying on the other mode.

23 Études, 1: xi-xii, emphasis mine. 24 Jessica Rikin noe ha he em epi de me a a idel ed epihe in eighteenth-century disputes, used to depict the target of ones disagreement to be a person constrained and devoid of something necessary to forming sound opinions. Science in the Age of Sensibility (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 104 One of the fundamental flaws in the intellectual mode that Saint-Pierre critiques is the systemic reliance on authority. The system of transmission of knowledge based on authority of the source rather than on direct evidence is represented as violence against a person. Savants who are operating in he em mode hae lo he ene of eidence, have sold themselves in order to gain advancement, require a refuge when faced with questions based in the other mode, and then pile on innumerable references to other scholars who have established hei ahoi b bjgaion of he den ho ill in turn perpetuate the cycle of abuse by inculcating the same respect for scholarly authority in their own students. Saint-Pierre makes the claim that purely intellectual knowledge of nature is divorced from the reality it purports to describe, having abandoned the reliance on sensorial evidence that sentiment still sustains. Ultimately this body of system knowledge is supported by chains of authority leading back to learned societies and philosophes instead of to the primary subject nature itself.

Elsewhere in this section, Saint-Pierre claims that philosophy has veiled the laws of nature from European savants, prejudiced by the authority of Aristotles name which was consecrated in all the universities of Europe. Instead, he urges the reader to take up the motto of the Royal Society of London: Nlli in Veba (On the word of no one).25

This motto is a statement of professional ethics, regarding the proper way to conduct affairs. These arguments beg the question of how Saint-Pierre came to have a powerful and direct experience of nature and reliance on the sort of thought based in experience he advocates.

25 Études, 1:xxi. 105 Saint-Pierre travelled extensively starting at the age of twelve when he took his first ocean voyage accompanying his uncle, a ships captain, to Martinique. Employing observation skills honed in travel accounts of his voyages, Saint-Pierre attempted an encyclopedic natural history project, his Études de la nature. His initial plan was to write a natural history, in the model of Aristotle, Pliny, Bacon, and other famous eighteenth- century contemporaries.26 The initial project of the Études hit an obstacle in approach that would defer Saint-Pierres completion of the project for several years. In his study on the strawberry plant, he describes encountering a seemingly insurmountable methodological crisis in his description work. Referring to his perception that a description of the strawberry would be incomplete without accounting for the various insects that also seem to be part of the life of the plant, he states,

Si on pense maintenant que toutes ces espèces, variétés, analogies, affinités, ont dans chaque latitude des relations nécessaires avec une multitude danimaux, et que ces relations nous sont tout-à-fait inconnues, on verra que lhistoire complète du fraisier suffirait pour occuper tous les naturalistes du monde.27

Saint-Pierres conclusion points to his growing sense of the futility of natural history, and it suggests that he was left pondering a new solution to this quest for knowledge. The demands for totality required by a system of description surpass what an individual is capable of encompassing. La nature est infiniment étendue, et je suis un homme très-borné. Non seulement son histoire générale, mais celle de la plus petite

26 Saint-Pierre writes in the first Étude, Je formai, il y a quelques années, le projet décrire une histoire générale de la nature, à limitation dAristote, de Pline, du chancelier Bacon et de plusieurs modernes célèbres. Études 1:1. 27 Études, 1:15. 106 plante, est bien au-dessus de mes forces.28 Diderot makes a similar argument about the difficulties encountered in creating the Encyclopédie:

Il eût été difficile de se proposer un objet plus étendu que celui de traiter de tout ce qui a rapport à la curiosité de lhomme, à ses devoirs, à ses besoins, & à ses plaisirs. Aussi quelques personnes accoutumées à juger de la possibilité dune entreprise [ ] ont prononcé que jamais nous nachèverions la nôtre. [ ] Quand on vient a considérer la matière immense dune Encyclopédie, la seule chose quon aperçoive distinctement, cest que ce ne peut être louvrage dun seul homme.29

28 Études, 1:2-3. 29 Encclopdie, Encyclopédie, 5:635. 107

Figure 2.1. The novel Paul et Virginie, appearing in print for the first time as pa of the third edition of Études de la nature. Image Source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

If we consider the novel to be related to the main project of the Études, then it must be a response to this problem of the limits of description. Saint-Pierre was, as we have observed, not the only author to contend with these issues and was among those who experimented with new ways to provide an adequate description of the natural world. This experimentation was both methodological as well as rhetorical, as Joanna

108 Stalnaker argues: description became, during the Enlightenment, a site of methodological tensions and competing truth claims that resulted in epistemological and lingiic epeimenaion and anfomaion.30 Moreover, the novel occupies a position at the end of the Études not just sequentially, but as a capstone to the whole project. Jean Fabre sees the inclusion of Paul et Virginie in the Études de la nature as a logical and meaningful aesthetic choice on Saint-Pierre pa. Fabre continues, claiming that this association was not entirely arbitrary [ ] Paul et Virginie was indeed, in a certain way, this Painting of Nature that the artist finally sensed he had brought to its point of perfection, a studio and competition piece, a master work, destined to crown the studies, understood in the technical sense of the term.31 I argue that Paul et

Virginie is a genre redraft of a project to describe nature and humankinds place in it, with roots in the Voyage, continuing in development with the Études, and culminating in this final fiction genre text.

The novel Paul et Virginie is both a creative distraction from the natural history project and an attempt to apply its principles to human society. In the novel, Saint-Pierre poa a micocom of ocie (ne peie oci) in o familie ho lie ide-by- side tucked away in a valley on Île de France. The story of Paul and Virginie recounts the fortunes of two single mothers who seek a better future far from France on colonial

Île de France. Marguerite and Madame de la Tour, though of different social classes, set

30 Joanna Stalnaker, The Unfinished Enlightenment: Description in the Age of the Encyclopedia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 212. 31 Salnake anlaion, p. 69 citing Jean Fabre Pal e Viginie paoale, Lumières et romantisme: Énergie et nostalgie de Rousseau à Mickiewicz, 2nd ed. (Paris: Klincksieck, 1980), 234. 109 up households adjacent to each other in a remote valley where they raise their children,

Paul and Virginie, respectively, together almost as siblings. This little society consists of the two women, their children, and two slaves who are the domestic servants of the women. All seems a tropical utopia where these refugees from regular French society strive to live simply and in harmony with divine providence, until the children reach adolescence. Before emerging maturity and sexual awareness create problems, Virginies mother sends her back to France to live with a wealthy relative. When Virginie finally returns to Île de France to reunite with Paul, she tragically perishes in a shipwreck within sight of her family onshore.

Saint-Pierre states in the preamble to Paul et Virginie that he e nest au fond quun délassement de mes Études de la nature, et lapplication que jai faite de ses lois au bonheur de deux familles malheureuses.32 The novel is thus both a relaxation from a natural history project and the application of that knowledge to transform two unfortunate families into happy ones, if only in writing. Contrasted to the descriptive and persuasive essay style of the Études, the emotionally touching narrative of Paul et Virginie marks a shift from appealing to the readers rational mind to influencing the reader instead via a different style of thinking sentimental thinking. Il faut des commentaires pour entendre aujourdhui les livres de lantiquité, qui sont les ouvrages de la raison [ ] mais il nen faudra jamais pour être touché des prières de Priam aux pieds dAchilles, du désespoir de Didon, des tragédies de Racine, et des fables naïves de La Fontaine.33 In

32 Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie, ed. Jean Ehrard (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 30. 33 Saint-Pierre, Études, 3:15. 110 Étude XII, Saint-Pierre makes the argument that works of reason require commentary to understand, particularly if they are from a different context or time, but he claims that works that are accessed through sentimental understanding do not require this mediation and solicit an active response. This is indeed how the text of Paul et Virginie functions as a more universal, activating, and humanizing version of some of the truths about nature that Saint-Pierre was attempting to convey in the Études.

Observing the passages in the novel where the landscape is named, larbre de

Pal, le epo de Viginie, and la Dcoee de lamii, o oheie imbed ih meaning beyond itself, we can see the texts attempts to establish a connection beyond mere material existence, or to create a new order to the world within which the two families may again find happiness. In a similar interpretation, Jean-Michel Racault finds these toponyms create a readable landscape that invests nature with references beyond the natural realm. Ces noms isolent dans lespace inorganisé du domaine des sortes de

points nodaux subjectivement investis par les membres de la petite société dune intense valeur affective [ ] ils sont associés à quelque particularité de lhistoire propre de leurs habitants.34 This effort to create new connections and reframe the signification of the natural world is the work of re-enchantment. The fiction of Paul et Virginie, positioned in the context of a natural history work, thus helps us to uncover the function of the novel in this tension between système and sentiment, between disenchantment and re-enchantment of the world.

34 Jean-Michel Racal. Système de la toponymie e oganiaion de lepace romanesque dans Paul et Virginie, in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 242, (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1986), 384. 111 Saint-Pierre claims that Paul et Virginie is an application of the laws of nature he was writing about in his Études de la nature. However, it is also writing that employs a different mode from the Études where he describes writing he noel a a dlaemen from the Études de la nature. In the dictionaries of the day, délassement signifies a relaxation or repose needed by the mind as much as by the body after difficult work. The definiion alo offe ha le changemen doccupation et de travail délasse lesprit, et

elefoi mme le cop.35 We see then that délassement is not necessarily synonymous with cessation of work, but with a change in activity that unwinds or

unlaces from work that has grown tiresome. We should understand that drafting the novel Paul et Virginie is not so much a rest from the primary work of the Études as it is work on the same problematic in a different mode it is still an application of the systems of nature Saint-Pierre is studying.

Thus, rather than regard Paul et Virginie as a side venture, we can come to see it as an evolution of the previous studies. Referring again to the quote above, this concluding novel applies principles gleaned from the earlier studies, and it does so for a purpose. Applying natures revealed laws or systems, Saint-Pierre confers joy or good fortune on two families who are qualified as unhappy or unfortunate (malheureuses) through his text. We may wonder why, here again, Saint-Pierre explicitly mentions

de famille. If he benefi of hi ne inigh ino naes laws applied to only one family, that would not signal general applicability, but rather devolve into the realm of particular story. Since this creative text affects not just one brave protagonist, nor even

35 En Délassement in he Dictionnaire critique de la langue française, 1787. 112 one family, but rather two families, it can therefore be seen as illustrative of society, or at least of a portion of society. The fact that multiple families are raised from malheur to

bonheur demonstrates a universal effect to what Saint-Pierre claims about the laws of nature. The novel gives an experience based on Saint-Pierres study of nature, wherein harmonious application of this understanding transforms people.

Given the tragic dénouement of the novel, it is somewhat surprising that Saint-

Pierre refers to happiness for the two families. The reader is led to experience a feeling of unease at the intrusion of the local governor, M. de la Bourdonnais, who is pressed by

Mme. de la Tours relatives to secure Virginies voyage to France. The reader also experiences the loss of Virginie who dies tantalizingly close to achieving her return to the island ideal she dearly misses while in France. And the framing narrative leads the reader to experience the wistful loss expressed by the vieillard who recounts the history of the abandoned valley to the traveler whose narrative voice opens the story. These layers of loss are created to lead away from the island and back to the reader in Europe. The idyllic island existence, that is to say the pastoral experience of morally noble characters living harmoniously with nature, is created for the reader as a memory to be sought after.

The feeling of loss invests the ideals of societal formation and harmonious relationship to nature presented in the novel with an emotional resonance. This emotional resonance is one not available, I would argue, from a textual genre based in the declarative phrases of encyclopedic knowledge. It is however, on the other hand, ideally offered in the creative illusion of a novelistic genre. For Saint-Pierre, discovery of the laws of nature begins in the studies and finds its application in the novel. He is no longer presenting laws or systems to appeal to the mind / esprit but is now creating an experience for the reader

113 designed to fill the heart. The happiness referred to above is Saint-Pierres ideal, experienced through Paul et Virginies characters in the middle of the valley, in the middle of the double narrative frames of the novel, before the reader experiences the sentiment of loss as the society of metropolitan France exerts influence. In this way we perceive a double set of experience that of the fictional characters and that of the reader. This may suggest that the reality of the readers experience derives from its origination in a fictional experience.

While the connections between the Études de la nature and Paul et Virginie can be drawn from Saint-Pierres statements and the imbrication of the latter in the former, the connections between Paul et Virginie and the Voyage à lîle de France also provide critical revelations about the genesis of the novel. It is in the Voyage that Saint-Pierre first describes his perspective on système versus sentiment for understanding nature. It is through the Voyage that we can appreciate how significantly Saint-Pierre altered his source material to accomplish the goals of Paul et Virginie. The Voyage à lîle de

France is Saint-Pierres travel account of his trip to Île de France, Île de Bourbon, and the

Cap de Bonne-Espérance between 1768 and 1771. It is his first published work, appearing in 1773.

What, then, is the relation between Paul et Virginie and the Voyage? For Robin

Howells the Voyage à lîle de France presages Saint-Pierres later works, particularly the

Études de la nature and Paul et Virginie. [Saint-Pierre] himself seems to see it as foundational, not just later, but at the time [ ]. As he completes the Voyage, that is,

114 Bernardin already envisages developing from it a banial inellecal concion.36

Meanwhile Yves Benot finds the Voyage a key to understanding Saint-Pierres theories about nature and providence. Benot states, En omme, la ele ecepion d Paadi des amours enfantines de Paul et Virginie, tout ce quil [Bernardin de Saint-Pierre] avait

à dire est présent dans le Voyage, matrice de tout ce qui suivra, mais pour une fois sans la moinde polii.37 Benot is referring specifically to Saint-Pierres theory of

Providence and natural harmony as well as his attention to plants, animals, and geology.

Considering Paul et Virginie as the fictional re-working of the travel account of

Voyage à lîle de France provides us with two important views into Paul et Virginie.

The first of these insights is into Saint-Pierres conception of sentiment and système. The second is the trajectory from travel account to pastoral novel that establishes a connection between the work of disenchantment and re-enchantment. To understand better the significance of this travel account for his later novel, let us first examine the roles of sentiment and système in Saint-Pierres thought such as they are revealed in the Voyage.

Sentiment versus système originates in the Voyage à l’île de France In the trajectory of Saint-Pierres writing that culminates in Paul et Virginie, we see that sentiment and system are two ways to read nature. For Saint-Pierre they are oppositional, as we can see in this key passage from Voyage à lîle de France.

36 Robin Hoell, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre Fonding Wok: The Voyage à lÎle de France, The Modern Language Review, 107, no. 3 (2012): 757. 37 Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint Pierre, Voyage lisle de France, lisle de Bourbon, au Cap de Bonne-Esprance, &c. Avec des observations nouvelles sur la nature et sur les hommes, par un officier du Roi, (2 vols. 1773), ed. Yves Benot (Paris: La Découverte/Maspero, 1983), 20. Unless otherwise stated, all references will be to this edition. 115 Jai écrit sur les plantes et les animaux, et je ne suis point naturaliste. Lhistoire naturelle nétant point renfermée dans des bibliothèques, il ma semblé que cétait un livre où tout le monde pouvait lire. Jai cru y voir les caractères sensibles dune providence; et jen ai parlé, non comme dun système qui amuse mon esprit, mais comme dun sentiment dont mon c est plein.38

Specialist knowledge or training is not required to understand nature. Saint-Pierre demystifies this knowledge of the physical world by claiming it is open to any who can observe. The author stresses his lack of qualifications to write on the subject of plants and animals. He wrote about them, but in no way is he a naturalist [je ne suis point naturaliste]. The negative construction with ne point is both a more formal register and a stronger negation than ne pas. However, as strongly as Bernardin de Saint-Pierre downplays his qualification as a formal naturalist, he equally strongly claims the right of all o obee and ndeand nae. Naal hio, he ie, i no cloed p in libaie, and hi condition is not new, it is timeless, as shown by the use of the present participle étant. It is a current condition, but also a state that recognizes no past or future.

Thus natural history is free and is always free from being confined to libraries the place of experts and a space apart from nature itself.

Saint-Piee hen ae hi belief ha naal hio i legible in he caace

enible of hi meaphoical book open to all. To understand, one needs but be sensitive to the patterns of providence revealed in nature. Wih he e of he em ne poidence, Saint-Pierre makes the claim that these patterns discernible to the sensitive person confirm a sense of purpose in nature, as something provided by a divine Creator

38 Saint-Pierre, Voyage, 26. 116 for the use of humankind. It is unclear whether Saint-Pierres text further claims that this providence is necessarily divine, or just possibly divine.

Saint-Pierre elects to found his writing on the premise that satiating sentiment is the appropriate context for adequately representing this knowledge of nature, not the creation of systems which entertain or flatter the intellect. In this implicit criticism of those naturalists such as Linnaeus, and to some extent Buffon, who strove to decode the patterns of nature to put them into their own system, Saint-Pierre criticizes the whole endeavor of systematizing knowledge. Carl Linnaeus (1707 1778) perhaps best represented the idea of comprehending nature through the lens of system because he energetically challenged the cumbersome and inconsistent way that animals and plants had been identified by natural historians since Aristotle, Theophrastus and Pliny the

Elder. Linnaeus instead created a shorter taxonomic system to identify plants and animals by genus and species in Latin. Linnaeus argued for the organized hierarchical structure of nature, which he published in his book Systema Naturae (1735) and refined over the following years in its many editions.

Ultimately, Saint-Pierre claims that corralling natures story into categories is an effort to denature nature by making it fit into explanatory schema that flatter human intellect but betray the essence of what is thus being instrumentalized. Saint-Pierre embraces a more humanistic approach that fills and fulfills his heart via the realm of feeling [sentiment]. This finds a parallel in the idea that figural representation can express what literal language cannot.

In reflecting upon his voyage to the Île de France, Saint-Pierre opposes sentiment to système and not to the more-expected antonym of raison. Sentiment and raison are

117 certainly considered in opposition in the eighteenth century, and in Saint-Pierres own work. Saint-Pierre famously modified Descartes cogito, writing in French, Descartes pose pour base des premières vérités naturelles: je pense; donc jexiste Je substitue donc à largument de Descartes celui-ci, qui me parait et plus simple et plus général: je sens; donc jexiste. Thus, Saint-Pierre opposes penser [to think] and sentir [to feel], to argue that the latter is the most apt way to think about the natural world. In support of this argument, I refer to Jean-Michel Racaults assessment of Saint-Pierres epistemological basis: Le sentiment, plus que la raison, est en lui la facult essentielle, celle qui détermine une autre forme de relation avec la nature: la connaissance de la création.39 For Saint-Pierre rationalist thinking leads to becoming system-bound and paying more attention to the details of the system rather than admiring the creation it is meant to describe. Saint-Pierre writes in the twelfth study of the Études, Quest-ce, dailleurs, que cette raison dont on fait tant de bruit? Puisquelle nest que la relation des objets avec nos besoins, elle nest donc que notre intérêt personnel.40 Due to the way that Saint-Pierre finds reason to be individual, self-interested, and subject to social influences, he warns, Méfions-nous donc de la raison, puisque dès les premiers pas elle nous égare dans la recherche de la vérité et du bonheur.41 Where reason leads to methods and systems which ultimately thwart the goal of understanding nature, sentiment leads back to the creation that inspires it.

39 Jean-Michel Racal, Lhomme et la nature chez Bernardin de Saint-Piee, Dix-huitième siècle, 45, no. 1 (2013): 316. 40 Saint-Pierre, Études, 3:8. 41 Saint-Pierre, 3:10. 118 We have established several French terms that are important for understanding these texts, notably sentiment and système. It behooves us to examine the semantics of these terms as they would have been understood by a reader some 200+ years ago.42 For a moden eade he em enimen eoke connoaion of feeling and emotion-based thought. The current-day French dictionary Le Grand Robert gives the common definition of the term sentiment as Tendance affecie ae able e dable, moin violente que lémotion ou la passion; état qui en résulte. Émotion, passion; affectivité,

enibili.43 However, the term is more complicated in the late eighteenth century. The

1762 dictionary of the Académie française gives five definitions for sentiment. The first definiion foce on phical enaion coneed o he mind o pii, Pecepion e lame a de obje, pa le moen de ogane de en.44 The second definition similarly focuses on nervous system activity. Not until the third definition do we find the emoional eonance ha i moe cenl aociaed ih he em, SENTIMENT se dit Des affections, des passions, & de tous les mouvemens de lame. The fourth definition, signifie aussi, Lopinion quon a de quelque chose, ce quon en pense, ce quon en jge, echoes the general sense we will see in the Encyclopédie.

42 An essential reference for sentiment in the eighteenth-century novel is Lynn Festa, Sentimental Figures of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); other work that examined how sentiment translated from private to public expression in eighteenth-century writing is John Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1988). 43 Le Grand Robert de la langue française online, .. Senimen, acceed Jne 26, 2019, https://gr-bvdep-com.ezp3.lib.umn.edu/robert.asp 44 Dictionnaire de lAcadémie française 4th ed., (Brunet, 1762), s.v. Senimen, 2: 711. 119 If we analyze the first definition more closely, we can appreciate the connection to the physical emphasized by the term sentiment at the time:

1. SENTIMENT. s.m. Perception que lame a des objets, par le moyen des organes des sens. Sentiment vif. Sentiment douloureux. Sentiment agréable. Il signifie de même, La faculté qua lame de recevoir limpression des objets par les sens. Avoir le sentiment exquis, le sentiment délicat.45

In this definition, we see that eighteenth-century French conceptions of sentiment focus first on the way the external world is perceived by the sensing and thinking apparatus of the body. The Cartesian ambiguity toward the locus of thought is highlighed hee b he japoiion of he inangible me ih he angible eno organs which communicate perceptions of material objects to that soul or mind.46 Note that the examples given in the definition remain on a very basic sensory level pleasant, painful, or sharp sensations emphasizing contact and the physicality of sensation, avoiding the question of how, for example, sight or smell function at a distance from the item seen or smelled. However, this emphasis on sensory perception is not the only signification for the French term sentiment at the time.

The third definition given by the same dictionary layers in the emotional aspect that is more commonly evoked today.

3. SENTIMENT se dit Des affections, des passions, & de tous les mouvemens de lame. Sentiment noble, élevé, généreux, bas, lâche. Sentiment dhonneur, de probité. Sentiment damour, de tendresse.

45 Dictionnaire de lAcadmie franaise, 2: 711. 46 Recall that French philosopher René Descartes sparked an enduring debate on mind/body split with his 1637 essay, Discours de la méthode, particularly in Part IV. For geae dicion of he longei and impac of Decae ok, ee Sphane Van Damme Descartes: Essai dhistoire culturelle dune grandeur philosophique (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2002). 120 Sentiment de haine, daversion, de colère, de vengeance. Sentiment de pitié. Sentiment de joie, de plaisir. Sentiment de douleur. Sentiment de reconnoissance. Sentiment destime, de respect. Sentiment de repentir. [] On appelle Sentimens naturels, Certains mouvemens qui sont inspirés par la nature. La tendresse des pères envers leurs enfans, & celle des enfans envers leurs pères, sont des sentimens naturels. On dit dans le même sens, Ce père a perdu tous les sentimens de la nature. Il na aucun sentiment dhumanité.

Again in this third definition we see that the seat of the sentiments is the âme.

Here, however, we find that the soul or mind are both the object and the agent of affect.

The movement of the soul/mind could either be in reaction to an impression received from the outside, or as agent generating that movement from within. It is interesting to note the additional explanation of certain sentiments as being in alignment with nature, and the example given is of a positive affect such as parental tenderness. In the last dictionary definition, we see the influence of nature in inspiring certain sentiments, which implies a connection between nature, natural forces and human thought or feeling.

Diderot and dAlemberts Encyclopédie offers more insight into the semantic range of he em enimen in he eigheenh cen. Senimen i decibed a mostly synonymous with the terms avis, pensée, and opinion, which may surprise a modern reader due to these terms lack of a connection to emotion. Diderot writes the first en nde he mliple headod Ai, Senimen, Opinion. He ie ha all

hee em elae o a jgemen de lepi, hee enimen diingihe ielf fom avis or opinion by emphasis on the deliberation that precedes this judgment, and in the

121 way it implies sincerity.47 Jaucourt will simply rework Diderots definition for the later

olme hen Senimen i he main headod accompanied b he ohe o

nonm. When gien a a nonm of pene, Jaco ae ha enimen i a simple enunciation of one idea, and ne coance on a par des raisons ou solides o appaene. Thi definiion again link enimen o idea, eaon, and belief. The rather long definition given under the medical category concentrates on the faculty of feeling, that is to say, of physical sensation in the body. The metaphysics category inclde a definiion of Senimen inime, hich colink o idence and eole around the awareness of ones own existence and the awareness of all truths perceived by the self. This series of definitions in the Encyclopédie gives us a sense of the wide lexical field aociaed ih he em enimen in he lae eighteenth century. We find in this understanding a representation of knowledge and the mind where thought is shaped by physical sensation, where the senses (the body) promise to provide a new way of knowing, where experience generates knowledge.

It is curious that the Encyclopédie does not include the definition that refers to emotion and passion which the Académies dictionary does. Where the Académies goal was to record language in use and defend a coherent structure of the French language, the

Encyclopédies writers sought to change the common manner of thinking (changer la façon commune de penser).48 Thus this omission in the Encyclopédie points to a tension

47 Compae he en fo Ai, Senimen, Opinion (1:879) ih he en Senimen, Ai, Opinion (15:57) and he en Pene, Senimen, Opinion (12:309) in the Encyclopédie. 48 Dideo ie in hi en Encclopdie ha hi cogniie aleaion i he goal of structuring their Encyclopedia with entries that are cross-linked with renvois. Si ces renvois de confirmation & de réfutation sont prévus de loin, & préparés avec adresse, 122 between two approaches. The Académies approach sought to systematize and control language usage as a part of Cardinal Richelieus strategy to consolidate power and national identity under one king, one nation, and one language.49 The approach of the

Encyclopédie team was to undermine the conceptual system in place and replace it with a more critical thought process. The encyclopedists proposed to accomplish this through the principle organizing schema of a tree of knowledge (Système figuré des connaissances humaines) and the use of cross-references that could serve to subtly undermine the content of one article by contextualizing it among other entries that were critical of the original entry. The omission of the emotional definition for sentiment in the Encyclopédie stakes a position firmly advocating for judgment and a rational materialist conception of the body, and a move to undermine emotion as intangible and unreliable. This opposition highlights the eighteenth-century struggle between asserting control over the material world through the creation of systems and validating humanitys place in the cosmos through subjective and intangible experience such as emotion.

As we have established, the French concept of sentiment is closer to thought/judgment in the eighteenth century than it is to emotion which is the terms principal association today. In the eighteenth century this sentiment mode of thought is linked to actual physical sensation, and thus is connected to the broader world around the sensing individual. This intimate connection between mind and sensory input evokes a feeling of permeability to the physical/natural world. Through a novel, Saint-Pierre

ils donneront à une Encyclopédie le caractere que doit avoir un bon dictionnaire; ce caacee e de change la faon commne de pene. 5:642. 49 C.V. Wedgwood, Richelieu and the French Monarchy (New York: Collier Books, 1968), 110-11. 123 creates a fiction that conveys knowledge of the material world and the subjects place within it. We can approach Saint-Pierres project by exploring the novels use of the pastoral genre.

The pastoral egnre as a way of knowing nature One mode of writing that draws a strong connection between nature and human behavior is the pastoral genre.

The paoal gene i defined a A liea ok poaing al life o he life of

hephed, ep. in an idealied o omanic fom (OED). Accoding o Fench liea scholar Jean Ehrard, the genre describes the happiness offered by nature and virtue

ogehe, and a êverie poétique sur lâge do.50 Pastoral literature descends from

Greek antiquity in texts like Virgil Bcolic and he idll of Theoci. Booing from the popularity of late Renaissance Spanish and Italian tales of shepherds and shepherdesses in bucolic settings, the French pastoral genre came into its own with the seventeenth-century monumental work by Honoré dUrfé, LAstrée. Other authors such as Sorel will take on and challenge the pastoral genre in the seventeenth century, and its popularity will start to fade by the beginning of the eighteenth century. Known for elegance of expression as well as great length (over 5,000 pages long), dUrfés novel took its title from the name of the Greek goddess of justice, Astraea, who was known in mythology for being the last of the deities living among humans to leave the earth at the end of the Golden Age. The choice of this goddess brought to dUrfés novel, and the pastoral genre thereafter, the idea of a return to a golden age of justice, peace, and

50 See Ehrards introductory remarks on genre and the pastoral in Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie, ed. Jean Ehrard (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 9. 124 prosperity and harmonious existence with nature inhabited by divine presence again. In

1788, the same year Saint-Pierre publishes Paul et Virginie, Friedrich Schiller published his poem Die Ge Giechenlande (The God of Geece) in which Schiller laments

he Engeng de Na (he ngodding o eclaiaion of nature).51 These ideas of pastoral harmonious existence and a world rehabilitated with the divine will be of major importance to the novel Paul et Virginie.

The pastoral is, however, a dated genre by the mid-eighteenth century and thus represents an unusual choice for Saint-Pierre, but he chooses this genre in order to

emake i, louvrage ne pa elemen da [] pa le gene mme ael l auteur le rattache explicitement: cette espèce de pastorale dont parle déjà lAvant-propos de

1788, l humble pastorale du Préambule de 1806.52

The pastoral genre seeks to show humans living in harmony with nature. But it typically does not figure humans in the form of the eighteenth centurys favored trope of the noble savage, but rather features civilized humans who are in some fashion elevated, or of high social rank and who are making thoughtful choices about living in simplicity and harmony with nature, avoiding a more complicated civilization that is readily available to them. Sentiment is a form of judgment informed by the impression of nature upon the senses and, in similar fashion, the pastoral is a genre of literature where persons exercise their judgment informed by the impression of the harmony of nature. In

51 Schille poem abo he Geek god and ha a lo hen cience and Protestant Christianity displaced a worldview encompassing everyday contact with the divine is often cited as the inspiration for Max Webers critique that the scientific mindset had stripped the world of charm, leaving it in a state of disenchantment (Entzauberung). 52 From Jean Ehrard Inodcion o Paul et Virginie, in Paul et Virginie, ed. Jean Ehrard (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 9. 125 Paul et Virginie, sentiment expresses nature in the landscape surrounding the protagonists.

Saint-Pierres novel begins with a painterly description of a landscape in need of rehabilitation. Sur le côté oriental de la montagne qui sélève derrière le Port-Louis de

LIsle-de-France, on voit, dans un terrain jadis cultivé, les ruines de deux petites cabanes.53 The field that once was worked is no longer cultivated, and the cabins of the owners are in ruins. From the first phrase of the novel we see that something is amiss and that a previously productive, but simple, human settlement is lost, the remains in ruins. The implici of he delling i implied ih he epeion peie cabane.

Not grand plantation estates, these were but small cabanes, meaning huts or shacks; the

Dictionnaire de lAcadémie française (1762) noe he pima eample of a cabane de bege, o a hepheds hut. (Intriguingly, the usage of the verb cabaner meaning o

hipeck is recorded for the first time in 1783 in the Encyclopédie méthodique marine

vocabulary with which Saint-Pierre would likely have been familiar.)54

Saint-Pierre presents the pastoral as an antidote to worldly prejudices and a means of redeeming those individuals who are corrupted by the colonial quest for wealth and

53 Paul et Virginie, 109. 54 Both the Trésor de la langue française and the Grand Robert note the usage of the verb cabaner o indicae capiing a boa fi appeaing in 1783. Onl he Trésor references the source, which I have confirmed is the nautical extension of Diderot and dAlembe Encyclopédie, written by Clairbois and Blondeau, the Encyclopédie méthodique. Marine, Dédiée et présentée à Monseigneur le Maréchal de Castries, Ministre et Sécrétaire détat au département de la marine. (Panckoucke, 1783, 3 vols.) 1:205. From his multiple long voyages aboard ocean-going vessels, Bernardin de Saint- Pierre would likely have been quite familiar with maritime vocabulary. By lexical association, Saint-Pierre subtly foreshadows the tragic end of his novel in the very first sentence. 126 power. The novel begins with the narration of a younger traveler who encounters an old man who is a local, at which point a second narration by the older man begins, embedded within the framework of the first narrator. The second narrator, the vieillard, asks the younger first narrator, dan cee le, ie la oe de Inde, el Eopen pe sintéresser au sort de quelques particuliers obscurs? qui voudrait même y vivre heureux, mai pae e igno? The wise old man is skeptical that any European would not be seduced by the lure of wealth and acclaim to be had in the Indies, to which destination this island is merely on the route. With his years of experience, the old narrator despairs that the happiness offered on this island will be too often rejected because this happiness comes with lack of wealth and fame. The onge naao cone, epling, lhomme même le plus dépravé par les préjugés du monde aime à entendre parler du bonheur que donnent la nature et la e.55 This redemption of corrupted persons is the essential value of the pastoral genre for Saint-Pierre. Here the text sets in opposition society (le monde) and nature. The tension between a naturalized ideal state and a corrupted state inpie ie and acion in he peie oci of hi noel, hown here in the character of Mme de la To, of hom i i aid on malhe li donna d coage.56 The received opinions and judgments of European society are prejudices that deprave humankind. Those prejudices can perhaps be dispelled or disenchanted through a new communication about nature and virtue, which give rise to happiness a kind of enchantment worked by the harmony of nature and virtue.

55 Paul et Virginie, 111. 56 Paul et Virginie, 112. 127 In general, the pastoral genres content focuses on nature and idealized simple folk. It reflects an esthetic of la belle nature and emphasizes harmony. Furthermore, it espouses an intention to teach morals, perhaps with the unstated purpose of returning to a lost Golden Age society replete with justice and natural abundance for humankinds delight. The pastoral in this sense is a way of knowing nature. It lies at the intersection of literature and epistemology.

Epistemology and the lessons of nature Epistemology and ways of knowing nature are the subjects of important debates in France and the rest of the colonial power nations of the eighteenth century. The foundations of truth and reliable knowledge were questioned by philosophes and writers critiquing powerful institutions and the authority of ideas received from old texts. As explorers and merchants returned from voyages to newly discovered places or more commercially viable routes to previously known but less accessible destinations, new possibilities for profits and advancement returned with them in the form of new cargo, specimens, and observations. Discoveries which challenged accepted knowledge about nature spurred debate and competition to claim understanding and mastery which might result in increasing wealth, technological advantage, or political power. It is in this context that unfolds the drama of Paul et Virginie on colonial Île de France.

In the novel two French women, Marguerite and Madame de la Tour, both victims of social misfortune and now single mothers, each raise their child in the simplicity of the rustic setting. The commentaries on misfortune and the proper way to live on the land found in the novel create an ethical aspect to the work. In the island valley, the families

128 live in harmony with the land, planting what best suits the natural terrain in different locations, bringing forth both beauty and utility to meet their simple needs.

Pastoral is a form that idealizes the harmonious relation between humans and nature, portraying a lost age of innocence when the earthly Garden held almost no risk of consequence for human actions, and all creatures lived in peaceful harmony. In such an age, humankind lives in close approximation of a pre-lapsarian state of innocence, and the land yields provisions with seemingly minimal effort on the part of humans. In addition, the pastoral often depicts persons of high social station playing at being shepherds or simple folk. It is a genre which relies on the illusion of people simulating a different way of life. In encouraging the reader to fantasize about the harmonious

natural existence of a lost golden age, the pastoral also forces him or her ultimately to confront the reality against which it protests.

Tion ai de la (vérité/fiction) de mes enfants adoptifs The deceit of fiction is one essential element at work here. This embrace of fiction begs the question does this enchanting fiction ultimately undermine the disenchanting knowledge work proposed for the Études as a whole? Catherine

Gallagher, commenting on the origins of the novel, noe, The moemen fom omance

o noel [] i pa of a lage epiemological hif fom a nao concion of h as historical accuracy to a more capacious understanding that could include truth conceived as mimetic simulation. The widespread acceptance of verisimilitude as a form of truth, rather than a form of lying, founded the novel as a genre. It also created the

129 caego of ficion.57 Thus Saint-Pierres shift from representing truth as system to representing it as sentiment parallels this epistemological opening to a more complex representation of knowledge/truth through fictional forms. Rather than undermine truth, fiction here serves to represent a complex truth more completely.58 If the système is a narrower construction of truth bound by historical accuracy, fiction leverages sentiment to represent a truth composed of multiple concepts in delicate and ever-mobile balance with each other. In other words, fiction activates the reader in the effort to interpret a text that is not literal. Fictions figurative language requires interpretation and the appreciation of both content and form. Rhetorical devices transform text from mere transfer of information into an experience of information. Interpreting a metaphor gives the reader the sentiment of a thing at the same time an intellectual judgment, a creative

short-circuit between the lexical fields of signifier and signified, and a feeling generated by comprehending this interplay while in the midst of creating that understanding in ones own mind. The act of reading is performatively enchanting. The genre in which one writes provides/deploys specific formal constraints and likely fields of vocabulary to be experienced by the reader. The skill of the author resides in how he or she uses them or breaks with them to create something that readers enjoy and reflect upon.

57 Catherine Gallagher, The Rie of Ficionali, The Novel, ed. Franco Moretti (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 341. 58 Much scholarship has been devoted to the critique of fiction in relation to truth in eighteenth-century lieae. Among ohe, one migh conl Aiole Poetics, Ian Wa The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957), Roger Maioli, David Hume, Literary Cognitivism, and the Truth of the Novel, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 54: 3, 2014), pp. 625- 48), and most particularly Nicholas Paige, Before Fiction: the Ancien Régime of the Novel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 130 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre appropriates the pastoral genre for his purposes, navigating between observation and narration. Once the narration has begun and we appreciate the ethical dimension of the pastoral genre, we can begin to lift out the threads of humanizing sentiment and organizing system to examine their interweaving in the text of Paul et Virginie.

Making the reader feel a certain way about nature through sentimentality The idea of evoking a type of feeling (emotion/sympathy) about a subject in order to effect a change on the part of the reader parallels what we see in our analysis of reading nature via sentiment in order to develop a change in the reader. We have often seen the emotional appeal to changed attitudes in the sentimental novel. Much has been written about the sentimental novel in the eighteenth century, particularly in the context of British colonial literature.59 Within this body of study, the focus on sentimental figures is on the affective dimension of a relationship between two individuals of two different social groups. As observed by Lynn Festa in Sentimental Figures of Empire,

Senimenali moes to locate the emotion, and assign it to particular persons, thereby deignaing ho poee affec and ho elici i.60 Festa points out that this mode of understanding has the paradoxical effect of demonstrating one persons positive feeling of charity for another, while also establishing the superiority of those who care over those

59 Apart from the obvious reference to Festa ok (below) we should note that much of the focus on the British sentimental novel is directed to nineteenth-century works, for example Margaret Cohen, The Sentimental Education of the Novel (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999). 60 Lynn Festa, Sentimental Figures of Empire, 3. See also the collection of studies in Albert J. Rivero, ed., The Sentimental Novel in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 131 who are different and are the objects of these emotions. When we attend to the dynamics

Festa highlights, the analysis of the texts reveals a lack of dimension to some of the characters in Voyage à lîle de France and Paul et Virginie.

We see an example of this sort of distant sympathy in the first plate of the

Voyage. This image announces that the philosophe-writer supports a universal view that the experience of all human beings is of concern to any other human being, citing a famous humanist line from the Roman playwright Publius Terentius Afer (Terence), who was a former slave himself. The citation from Terence in the caption below the illustraion ead Homo m; homini nihil a me alienm po, (Je i Homme; et rien de ce qui inee lHomme ne me ange).

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Fige 2.2. Engaing Homo m b Loi-Joeph Maelie afe a daing b Moea le jene. 1773 ediion of Voage lle de France. Image Soce: Ofod Uniei digiied b Google Jne 24, 2008.

133

The image figures the European philosopher seated casually at his writing desk, legs crossed, quill poised to continue writing on the sheet that is half-completed, gazing up at the black slave who has come into the study to speak with the philosopher.

However, the slave is not an expected guest for he has no seat and is indeed crouched, half kneeling, to point plaintively to the Code Noir on the desk.61 With his other hand, the slave drops manacles and a whip on the floor, in a gesture of apparent emancipation and complaint. The image demonstrates the compassion on the face of the philosophe, and yet the black slave is manifestly other like the natural history specimens of study at the philosophes feet. The image and text together (particularly when interpreted by a learned person who would know the biography of Terence) seem to propose a universality of humankind, while at the same time delineating who is the object of sympathy and the superior status of the person in position to feel that sympathy.

In letter 12 of the Voyage, we understand, in light of Festas concept of sentimentality shaping the terms of imperialistic agency, that the letter writer is the colonial superior who possesses the affective response, while the black slaves display a situation to elicit the writers response. After several descriptions of the terrible punishments inflicted by the slaveholders, Saint-Pierre describes a scene of his

61 For discussion about the tension between philosophical arguments for freedom of slaves in France and economic arguments for the continuation of slavery in the colonies, see Samuel L. Chaman, There are no Slaves in France: A Re-Examination of Slave Laws in Eighteenth Century France, The Journal of Negro History 85, no. 3 (Summer, 2000), pp. 144-53; or Sue Peabody deailed achial eeach in There Are No Slaves in France: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 134 intervention. Une esclave presque blanche vint, un jour, se jetter [sic] à mes pieds: sa maitresse la faisait [ ]. Elle me priait de demander sa grace, que jobtins.62 The slave is represented as an individual in a situation to demand compassion, but her dialogue is not given to us, merely reported by Saint-Pierre. The text sets out for us her physical description, her actions, but allows the European author to report a summary of her abuses at the hands of her mistress and the litotes of his salvific intercedence. This representation minimizes the effort to gain reprieve for the slave, imputing power to the

European with whom the reader can identify since that character is more fully developed in the text. Likewise, in Paul et Virginie we are privy to the childrens emotional sensitivity and response to the slave who has fled her owner, but the slaves own response is written to display the emotions of the children. These are all examples of the

sentimental novel dynamic at work in Saint-Pierres texts; however, these passages are brief interludes within the greater body of the narrative.

The key here in Saint-Pierres text is relation not to other persons, but essentially to nature. Festa argues that the sentimental figures wrest the reader from indifference.

Similarly, Saint-Pierre desires to write about nature, not as something to entertain the intellect, but as something to fill the heart. For Festa, sentimental literature is essentially performative and is evaluated on its ability to affect readers. She argues that sentimental writing can be seen to provide the novel with political and moral efficacy. For her, the sentimental novel functions by transporting philanthropic suggestion in the guise of emotional and guilty-pleasure reading. Paul et Virginie functions in a similar way, with

62 Saint-Pierre, Voyage à lisle de France (Paris: Merlin, 1773), 198. 135 many of the readers who avidly contributed to its popularity effusing to the author or friends about how emotionally moving they found reading the novel to be. Caroline

Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis wrote to Saint-Piee, Pal e iginie! Jaime cette histoire

à la folie, avec passion, je ne saurois dire à quel excès. Je lai lue tout entière le jour même de leno.63 Paul et Virginie was written not to be simply an emotional best- seller, but to transport suggestions about natural history study and the human ethical response to this knowledge.

Using sentiment to naturalize système While Saint-Pierre claims to write about nature as a sentiment which fills the heart, he acknowledges that it can be (and has been) written about in terms of système. In fact, through the novel Paul et Virginie he uses sentiment to naturalize système. It is ciical o ndeand ha sentiment in eighteenth-century French had a different definition than is commonly used today, and it was more akin to thought or opinion in the eighteenth century. Hoee me had a definiion imila o ha e hink of

oda, Aemblage de plie popoiion, de plie principes vrais ou faux, liés ensemble, & des conséquences quon en tire, & sur lesquelles on établit une opinion, une docine, n dogme, &c.64 Saint-Pierre creates an experience for the reader in order to persuade that reader of Saint-Pierres propositions regarding nature, virtue, and harmony with nature. This experience passes from the readerly cognitive re-creation of physical

63 Caoline Sphanie Flici de Genli, Caoline Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis, comtesse de Genlis to Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: between April & May 1788, In Electronic Enlightenment Scholarly Edition of Correspondence, ed. Robert McNamee et al. University of Oxford. https://doi- org.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/10.13051/ee:doc/sainjaVF0032392a1c. 64 Dictionnaire de lAcadémie française 4th ed., (Brunet, 1762), s.v. Système. 136 sensations in the descriptions which prepare the context for the narration. The narration adds a layer of human interactions, experienced as if lived by the reader. From the combined effects of description and narration, the readers consciousness is impressed upon by these representational forces to create imagined sensory perceptions, passed to the mind to create feelings, thoughts, and opinions.

Bernardin de Saint-Pierres work was not an outlier, but instead consistent with much of the science and epistemology of his time and his peers. Jessica Riskin offers one explanation for this seemingly incompatible mixture of empirical study and a mode of thought based in emotion, Enlighenmen cience inclded aionali em-building and instrumental empiricism. But these very tendencies took shape by their dialectical engagemen ih anohe elemen, alo acing ihin he cience, enimenalim.65

Rikin eamine empiicim o highligh he enion beeen delibeae aionalim and

a peien appeal o an emoional engagemen ih nae.66 She argues that the narrative of the former has overshadowed the latter, belying the fact that both were at work in creating the empiricism of the eighteenth century, and shaping the direction empiricism would take later.

In Riskins formulation, senimenal empiicim i knoledge ha deie no from sensory experience alone, but from a combination of sensation and sentiment. 67

Revealing sentiment as a component of eighteenth-century empirical methods allows her to analyze the interaction between natural sciences and moral/political sciences. Today

65 Jessica Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 248. 66 Riskin, 248. 67 Riskin, 4. 137 we consider these disciplines to be quite separate and as often employing different methods of research. It would be unusual today, for example, to use a qualitative study method for a chemistry experiment, focusing on subjective impressions of the qualities of materials involved, rather than a quantitative method which attempts to remove the subjective from the scientific method by relying on measurement and reliably repeatable observations of material properties. Riskin recuperates for us a different conception of

scientific research in the eighteenth century, one that admitted a subjective human element and valorized sentiment as a mode of accessing truth. In this light, Saint-Pierres choice o ie abo naal hio a a enimen doe no appea a ange a i doe at first for a modern reader. If the novel uses narrative fiction to activate sentiment, we can now understand this fiction to be a tool for communicating not just moral truths, but also empirical truths about the natural world, including human beings as part of the natural world.

Against this backdrop of sentiments empirical validity in the eighteenth century,

Saint-Pierre resists the rise of a rigid systematization of nature which he derides as an effort that flatters the intellect of the person thus enshrining the world in their descriptive taxonomies. In a letter to the editor of the Journal de Paris, Saint-Pierre lambasts an anonymous contributor who criticized Saint-Pierres famous theory of tides. He writes,

il e clai e lanonyme na observé la nature que dans des livres à systêmes, quil noppose que des noms à des faits, & des autorités à des raisons68 In Saint-Pierres

68 Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint- Pierre to [unknown]: Thursday, 22 November 1787, In Electronic Enlightenment Scholarly Edition of Correspondence, edited by Robert McNamee et al. University of Oxford. https://doi-org.ezp2.lib.umn.edu/10.13051/ee:doc/sainjaVF0052579a1c. 138 letter the critic fails because he supports his counter-argument with books full of systems versus Saint-Pierres actual observation of nature, names versus facts, and authorities versus reasons. In each case, the anonymous detractor refers to something different from direct observation, with the primary position for the worst offender accorded by Saint-Pierre to livres à systèmes. Saint-Pierre places value on direct observation, facts (ostensibly related to those observations), and logic which certainly play a role in system-making. Indeed in his letter to the editor, Saint-Pierre makes it clear that he has employed all of those in his search to understand the functioning of the oceanic tides. Thus, he does not reject the underpinnings of système, but rather finds them lacking if they remain in the realm of intellectual manipulation as a separate system of representation to the mind. What is missing is the direct impression upon the human observer who is in contact with nature, puts that evidence above pre-conceived systems of nomenclature (des noms), and uses reason to make sense of those sensory impressions

in other words, to make sense of the sentiment of nature. Truth can be attained and communicated when one puts système and sentiment together in balance.

Nineteenth-century critic and historian Hippolyte Taine evaluated the eighteenth century as entirely analytical and rational, foreclosing on humanizing sentiments, the result of which led to the cold logic of the Terror.69 However, closer inspection shows that Enlightenment empiricism was more open and sentimental. Riskins analysis reveals the investigatory mode of the period to be receptive, moral, and unsystematic. In addition, while the philosophes of the eighteenth century humanized natural science

69 Hippolyte Taine, Les origines de la France contemporaine: lancien rgime, 2 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1876). 139 inquiry via sentiment, the application of a scientific approach grounded in observation lent an ontological weight to essays on the organization of human affairs. Observations of natural surroundings could lend empirical weight to a text on affiliated topics but could also serve to justify or naturalize the arguments within the work. The pastoral is a genre where such naturalization is a constitutive element.

Camouflaging epistemological work in landscape In any pastoral work, the natural world is more than mere setting; natures representation plays an essential role to communicate a reality or desired reality about the relationship between human beings and the natural world. In Paul et Virginie, the island landscape frames the narrative as the mountainous sides of the valley frame the conjured image of the modest homes of the two families. The characters elevate certain features of the landscape in importance by naming them, ch a le epo de Viginie and la

Découverte de lamii. Additionally, the novel effuses praise for the work Paul and the servant Domingue perform to labor in concert with nature, cultivating each terrain with what grows best there. The characters do not impose a uniform monoculture agriculture on the land, which would force production according to a pre-conceived plan. Instead, they identify the strengths of a particular plot and work harmoniously with nature. This method stands in contrast to common colonial practice. Just as pastoral novels reveal something about the relation between humans and the environment, the representation of natural environment in text and image can reveal human systems behind the production and maintenance of landscapes both natural and cultivated.

Jill Casids work on eighteenth-century landscape imagery opens our view into critical details of botany and agriculture that, when closely read, unveil colonial 140 machinations to subjugate nature despite the cost or effort. In Sowing Empire, she argues that an important part of the colonial process involved re-landscaping acquired territories.70 The colonizers razed conquered territories of indigenous flora and invested them with new plantings as an essential part of taking possession of the land. The parallels between clearing to replant and reducing to a system to then re-enchant (and thereby to lay claim to a new rhetoric) are striking. Saint-Pierre imagines for himself a founding role in creating a new literary heritage, writing, Il ne manque à lautre partie du monde que des Théocrites et des Virgiles pour que nous en ayons des tableaux aussi intéressants que ceux de notre pays.71 In the case of Paul et Virginie as completion of

Études de la nature, the poles of système and sentiment work together to clear the previous épistémè and construct a new cosmological understanding accompanied by a new rhetoric to express it, often based in reference to the natural surroundings of Île de

France.

Through Casid ok we see that natural landscape descriptions can serve to mask racialized violence and ecological destruction, as well as to naturalize ideological positions like colonial expansion. We see examples of this process in Paul et Virginie.

When Paul is of an age where the two mothers start to speak of encouraging their children to marry each other, Marguerite and Mme. de la Tour wonder how they and their children will have enough income to sustain them all. Mme. de la Tour suggests that

Paul is their only hope, if he can but establish some small wealth and income. She

70 See particularly the discussion of colonial plantation land claims based on the Roman La concep of res nullius in Jill Casid, Sowing Empire: Landscape and Colonization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), chap 1. 71 Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie, 251. 141 gge, Mais en faisant passer Paul dans lInde pour un peu de temps, le commerce lui fournira de quoi acheter quelque esclave: et à son retour ici nous le marierons à

Virginie.72 To secure a stable future for her daughter and future son-in-law, a temporary participation in colonial commerce will suffice. This fortune-seeking endeavor should result in wealth, income, and some slaves to provide the necessary labor to run their farm operations. This phrase is quickly overshadowed by the rest of the sentence which zips on to speak of the marriage of the two children, and the assurance of Virginies utmost future happiness with Paul. The emotional appeals of the second half of the sentence elide the stark suggestion of acquiring a slave, and then the character suggests they go talk to their neighbor about it, effectively changing scenes and drawing us further away from contemplation of the proposal. Indeed, the neighbor (who is the vieillard narrating most of the novel) cloaks the project in a naturalizing discourse. He tells the two women,

Les mers de lInde on belle [] en penan ne aion faoable po pae d ici aux

Indes, cest un voyage de six semaines au plus.73 The seas are beautiful, the season is decibed a faoable, and he effo of he ip i minimied b he alificaion a pl [a mo]. Fhemoe, hi endeao i given as the logical and necessary result of natures providence;

Quand nous ne lui donnerions que du coton brut, dont nous ne faisons aucun usage faute de moulins pour léplucher; du bois débène, si commun ici quil sert au chauffage, et quelques résines qui se perdent dans nos bois: tout cela se vend assez bien aux Indes, et nous est fort inutile ici.74

72 Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie, 163. 73 Saint-Pierre, 163. 74 Saint-Pierre, 163-64. 142 The mention of slavery is quickly elided by narration that whisks the reader away to a new interlocutor and a new setting, made tangible to enchant the reader with a naturalizing discourse. This passage begins a sequence of sensory-based descriptive text, first distancing the reader from the initial scene where acquiring a slave is mentioned, by crossing beautiful seas in good weather, and then conjuring up the abundant providence of nature. The descriptions of the trade materials charm the reader with a series of sensory impressions brought forth by the use of adjectives, verbs, nouns, and contrasting vivid colors. The cotton is raw, rough, and needs to be peeled from the boll. Heat

(chauffage) is the sensation emanating from the ebony wood (and employing such a prized luxury wood for burning would be shocking the skilled use of ebony for marquetry and furniture making in France caused those artisans to be known as

ébénistes, dating back to the seventeenth century).75 Losing oneself in the woods suggests the vision of thick foliage and the sliding feel of branches hindering the way forward. The original impetus behind the description of all these trade goods is the proposal for Paul to acquire some fortune, including the labor asset of a slave.

Not only does this passage trigger sensory experiences of nature, but the passage also deploys an argument based on the logic of natural providence. These natural materials are provided by nature for humankinds benefit it would be unreasonable to waste what nature has given in abundance. In this structured logic we can perhaps see a

75 See he en fo bénie in Dictionnaire universel françois et latin, Tome 1 (Leers: La Haye, 1690). Accessed July 16, 2019. University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 Edition), ed. Robert Morrissey and Glenn Roe, http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/. 143 type of système of providence being applied in tandem with a sensory/thought/judgment of sentiment to make this commercial venture seem natural.

In the above passage, the start-up donation of goods for Paul is characterized as minimal, evidenced by the restrictive negation nee , signifying that if the local neighbors could give Paul only these simple items, it would be sufficient for him to have a successful start in commerce in the Indies. The goods mentioned are luxury materials much in demand in eighteenth-century trade: cotton, ebony, and resins. These items are all natural, plant-based materials that can be made into things useful for human beings.

The nature evoked here is not animal, but vegetal therefore not conjuring up associations of capture, subjugation, or butchering linked to animal-derived goods and leading the reader away from representations akin to slavery and instead toward peaceful images of gathering parts of plants. Furthermore, the text emphasizes the logical benefit of Paul taking these goods to a market. These items are going to waste on Île de France for lack of capability to exploit them locally; there is no machinery to mill the cotton, ebony wood is so common that it is burned for heating, and valuable plant resins (used for medicines, furniture finishes, cosmetics, and more) go unharvested in the forests.76

The commercial exploitation of these natural products is represented as a way to avoid wasting what nature has provided. This production seems almost excessive as tree saps drip to the ground unharvested, raw cotton lies useless without a mill to separate fibers from seeds, ebony wood risks cluttering the environs if it is not burned for heat, and all of

76 Consult the entries in the Encyclopédie for the eighteenth-century techniques of processing and commercializing these raw materials, largely drawn from colony lands, Coon, 4:307; bene, 5:213; and Rine, 14:172. 144 this raw excess is represented with hyperbole as very useless to the inhabitants of the island. We note that the utility of natural products to people is stressed in the concion o cela [ ] no e fo inile ici. Whee i can be made efl, however, is by selling it in the Indian Ocean trading routes. If all this is to appear logical, then why invoke the imagination and the senses? The descriptive elements and the narrative surrounding them serve to naturalize a particular view of nature, to naturalize a commercial or even capitalist exploitation of nature. The effect of this passage is to make a pe of système appea naal, logical, and ehical.

Norman Bryson analyzes the subterfuge of naturalization in Word and Image.77

In it, Bryson discusses the use of discursive and figural elements in visual arts and demonstrates the application of these types of elements to literary texts as well. For

Bryson, a reader/viewer will assume more truth value from elements that appear as more figural, or more natural, and will, inversely, approach more skeptically those elements that appear to issue more directly from the intention of the author/artist (the discursive).

Thus, the author/artist may subtly convey more truth-value to certain elements by depicting them as accidental or figural. The effect is that elements taken to be part of the natural realm are more readily accepted as true. We will use this principle to analyze passages from the novel where the text transports ideological positions via the figural.

This is the principle idea behind the use of natural metaphor to naturalize concepts in writing.

77 Norman Bryson, Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Régime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 145 Let us consider some examples where what appears at first glance to be simple description reveals this work of naturalization. In Paul et Virginie, the text gives an abundant description of the natural surroundings on the island where the protagonists are raised. In the figurative language used to describe the setting, the text employs a collection of metaphors drawing associations with royal and paternal authority. The

alle hee he o i e i an enceine like a alled foe hee n gand

ilence gne, and he ene of ahoi ihin enfoce elemenal peace, o o e paisible, lair, les eaux et la lumière.78 This sense of peace is unstable and rhetorically undermined by the military imagery conjured in the movement of palm fronds a few lines lae, le longe flche ojo balance pa le en, and he ns rays striking the crown of the mounain ange, e aon en fappen le coonnemen (110). The paage end ih he monain peak clohed in oal colo, paaien dor et de pourpre sur la de cie, all of hich i famed again he backgond, no he ordinary natural sk of le ciel, b the plural de cie, ggeing realms where the gods of old dwelt, and thus gesturing toward divine authority in the background.

The representational act serves to naturalize French colonial possession of the island and transmute the violence of territorial expansion into the natural protection of the familial hierarchy. As art historian Jill Casid argues in Sowing Empire, this strategy also extends into visual representation. Through an analysis that considers both text and image in Paul et Virginie, Casid illuminates how visual representations continue the discourse of naturalizing colonial transplantation, particularly in the scenes of Virginies

78 Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie, 110. 146 death and burial. Discussing one of the plates illustrating Virginies burial, she writes,

he cene ocheae he inemen of he dead hie oman a a ocial and boanical landscape [ ] ha ene he planaion ih hich he eie begin.79 Another textual example of how the discourse of colonialism is conveyed can be found in

Diderots Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville, where a natural discourse that is more favorable to colonial interest succeeds one that is sharply critical of it.80 In the

Supplément, Diderot depicts an imagined before and after context for French explorer

Louis-Antoine de Bougainvilles encounter with the inhabitants of Tahiti. Praising the

natural culture of the islanders, Diderot writes an important passage in which a tribal elder prophetically decries the damage to their sovereignty and culture resulting from their overly-friendly welcome of the Europeans to their shores. After the harangue du vieillard, the island falls silent n ae ilence gna dan oe létendue de lle only for a new discourse to commence in the next section of the text, which recounts

Bougainvilles European crews interactions with the islanders. The silence in the whole island causes a sudden lull in the natural noises of the land, signifying the silencing of the islanders culture, the animals silenced (in fear or perhaps in death from the invaders hunting), or removed in trade to Europe, even possibly the death of the islanders.

79 Jill Caid, Inhming Empie: Iland a Colonial Neie and Gae, in The Global Eighteenth Century, ed. Felicity Nussbaum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 291. 80 See Georges Benrekassas discussion of colonial discourse in the Supplément in Fables de la personne: pour une histoire de la subjectivité (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985), 219-21. 147 Using silence in a different manner on the very first two pages of Paul et Virginie,

Saint-Pierre prepares the reader to receive the fiction by creating a sort of textual white noise that both isolates and activates the reader.

A lentrée de ce bassin, doù lon découvre tant dobjets, les échos de la montagne répètent sans cesse le bruit des vents qui agitent les forêts voisines, et le fracas des vagues qui brisent au loin sur les récifs; mais au pied même des cabanes on nentend plus aucun bruit, et on ne voit autour de soi e de gand oche ecap comme de maille. [] A peine lécho y répète le murmure des palmistes qui croissent sur leurs plateaux élevés, et dont on voit les longues flèches toujours balancées par les vents.81

The text prepares the reader with sensory experience, as one might prepare a canvas to receive the paint. Saint-Pierre creates a sense of peace and serenity separate from the incessant motion and sound of the wind and the trees and the waves. One passes through this sensory deprivation created by sensory overload at the entrance to the valley; then at the foot of the cabins there is acn bi. Thee i omehing adio and ial about the primitive, raw encounter with nature, followed by solitude and silence. From the beginning of the novel, Saint-Pierre affronts the reader with a powerful experience of tropical nature. The island and the forces of nature will be the readers initiation into this fictive space, not a familiar French landscape or even another human being.

The appeaance of a peon, he Je of naaion, i delaed, o een eacaed fo a pace. No nil he hid paagaph of he noel doe an ponon ohe han on appea. The hid paagaph bel ine a je ino he a landcape pained by the first two paragraphs. Jaimais à me rendre dans ce lieu où lon jouit à la fois dune

81 Paul et Virginie, 109-10. 148 vue immense et dune solitude profonde.82 The narrator does not inhabit this space ordinarily, it is a place he or she (we dont know yet which) liked to transport himself or herself. The narrator chooses to be in this place where, as in the act of reading, one has

he omeha paadoical benefi of boh ne e immene and ne olide pofonde. I i a piileged locaion hee one benefi fom a ide-open space with unrestricted sight, and yet where one is not seen, or felt to be in the company of others.

The adjectives immense and profonde lend the description introspective gravitas. The reader senses this is a space where important truths are reflected upon.

In the writing of Saint-Pierre and other eighteenth-century writers, multiple modes of reflection cooperate and compete with one another. Saint-Pierre recounts his aonihmen ha peon of geni old declae animal o be meel machine, to which Jean-Jacques Rousseau replied, On cee de eni, and on commence

aionne.83 For Rousseau as well, sentiment provides a truth that reason alone does not, or that reason blocks. This interaction is keenly felt in Paul et Virginie when the narrator describes the religion of the members of this pastoral petite société.

In a brief passage describing the simple activities of this little society, Saint-Pierre writes of their straightforward understanding of theology through the access of sentiment.

Dans la saison pluvieuse ils passaient le jour tous ensemble dans la case, maîtres et serviteurs, occupés à faire des nattes dherbes et des paniers de bambo [] La ni ene, il opaien la le d une lampe; ensuite

82 Paul et Virginie, 110. 83 Saint-Pierre reports a conversation he had with Rousseau on the subject of Malebanche philooph in Lie IX of the Harmonies de la nature, p. 277. e Complètes de Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Ed. L. Aimé-Martin (Paris: Dupont, 1826). 149 madame [sic] de la Tour ou Marguerite racontait quelques histoires de voyageurs égarés la nuit dans les bois de lEurope infestés de voleurs, ou le naufrage de quelque vaisseau jeté par la tempête sur les rochers dune île déserte. []

De temps en temps madame de la Tour lisait publiquement quelque histoire touchante de lancien ou du nouveau Testament. Ils raisonnaient peu sur ces livres sacrés: car leur théologie était toute en sentiment, comme celle de la nature, et leur morale toute en action, comme celle de lÉvangile. Ils navaient point de jours destinés aux plaisirs et dautres à la tristesse. Chaque jour était pour eux un jour de fête, et tout ce qui les environnait un temple divin, où ils admiraient sans cesse une Intelligence infinie, toute-puissante, et amie des hommes; ce sentiment de confiance dans le pouvoir suprême les remplissait de consolation pour le passé, de courage pour le présent, et despérance pour lavenir. Voilà comme ces femmes, forcées par le malheur de rentrer dans la nature, avaient développé en elles-mêmes et dans leurs enfants ces sentiments que donne la nature pour nous empêcher de tomber dans le malheur.84

Saint-Pierres idyllic scene of the peie oci engage he eade o epeience a model of people living in harmony with nature and redefining wild and civil spaces.

This passage describes one of the pastimes of the little group during the rainy season.

The context given is the decidedly non-European setting of a hut where the masters and slaves (maîtres et serviteurs) (the two families and their slaves) crowd together to gain shelter from the torrential rain and winds. Nature is a force that flattens, if not erases, hierarchical social stratification, forcing all to share the same space and activities regardless of race or social standing. The narrator describes indoor days spent in useful activity, hands busy making baskets or with other plantation tasks. Once daylight is gone, they take a meal by the light of a lamp. This passage portrays the group as hardworking because they work until they can no longer, their industry ceasing when

84 Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie, 147. 150 night comes on hem. The condiion ha come of i on accod, la ni ene, and i not imposed by a dominant member of the group at some set time. Additionally, this group works in harmony with the rhythms of nature, ceasing when night tells them the day is done, rather than at a moment dictated by some mechanical reckoning of time regulated by a European clock. Living in response to and in harmony with natures cues is the precondition for this peaceful and productive experience.

Following the simple meal in the tenuous glimmer of lamplight, the regular routine, as indicated by the use of the imperfect tene in soupaient and racontait, includes one of the two matriarchs telling some frightening stories. The two mothers of the group take turns recounting tales meant to evoke danger and elicit sympathy for the travelers caught in terrible circumstances. The passage indicates for us that these tales were generally variations on two specific themes, regardless of narrator. This consistency implies that both family leaders were in agreement about the tenor and content of the stories. The stories are recounted with the intent to divert and instruct the children and slaves, given the unity of themes used by both women.

The novel specifies the two essential plot lines given by the types of stories told.

The first theme involves travelers menaced by thieves, the second involves travelers shipwrecked on a deserted island. At first pass these stories resemble the standard

campfire tale told to pass the evening and interest children with recounted adventures.

On closer inspection, these two story lines have other values in common. In both cases the protagonists are not where they belong; they are travelers. In the first they are lost

(ga). The sense of peril is heightened by several qualifiers. Not only are they lost, b hi occ hen iion i limied, la ni and in he ood, hence in a pace no

151 subjugated by human beings and where wild beasts still roam. These woods are indeed

infeed, not (only) with wild animals but with robbers. To accentuate further the strangeness for the primary audience in the hut, the woods are not the familiar woods of their island, instead they are the woods of Europe. One reads the phrase dan le boi de lEope infe de ole, and i led o hink ha all he ood of Eope ae infeed ih hiee. I i eealing ha he aho, ho i Fench, doe no a he

ood of Fance o een of a paicla egion of Fance, no ae he he ood of some other specific foreign country near France; they are the woods of Europe. Had the text referenced some other country, one could read nationalistic antagonism underlying the menace of those woods. Here Saint-Pierre sets up the opposition between

Europe and not-Europe, in this case, colonized islands. Turning a standard trope on its head, Saint-Pierre casts the civilized lands of Europe as the menacing place of wild woods filled with violent peril. Tales told to frighten children in this novels version of

Île de France feature the now-unknown original homeland. Through this novels reversal of the typical trope of the New World as site of the uncivilized wild frontier and

European towns as the locus of civilization, Saint-Pierre critiques the notion of what is civilized and suggests a replacement for it.85

With this twist, does the text critique colonialism, or does it set out to create a new rhetoric with which to frame the perspective of a new world, alien to those who come from the developed lands of Europe? The avant-propos to Paul et Virginie declares

85 This type of reversal was not an innovation of Saint-Pierre, haing become a andad ope in he philoophe iing b hi ime, pified a he noble aage, fo eample in Volaie Huron, the Vieillard in Dideo Supplément, and going back as fa a Monaigne fo inance in De cannibale. 152 dissatisfaction with the rhetorical legacy of Western culture, and suggests a new poetics is poised to replace it.

Nos poètes ont assez reposé leurs amants sur le bord des ruisseaux, dans les prairies et sous le feuillage des hêtres. Jen ai voulu asseoir sur le rivage de la mer, au pied des rochers, à lombre des cocotiers, des bananiers, et des citronniers en fleurs. Il ne manque à lautre partie du monde que des Théocrites et des Virgiles pour que nous en ayons des tableaux aussi intéressants que ceux de notre pays.86

The paage gge ha he ohe pa of he old i aiing o ial he poeic accomplishment of Europe, heightened b he eicie negaion ne e, hi lack appears near its moment of fulfillment to provide dramatic scenes (tableaux) as worthy of interest as those of Europe. It is a new poetic idiom, based in new natural references such as coconut and banana trees. This new poetic expression is more vigorous and fertile than the old tired texts of antiquity (and contemporary eighteenth century works grounded in their authority and myths). Where the established European poets subjects lie in repose along the banks of streams or under silver-grey beech trees, the New World subject sits a more vibrant pose on the shore of a sea or at the feet of boulders or exotic trees. The three elements of each comparison demonstrate European limitation and blandness compared with the greater possibilities of the New World settings; for example, the sea offers grander voyages than a stream. In addition, the abundance of nature is greater in the new poetic world where the old beech is matched against three varieties of tree in the islands, and those tropical trees are depicted as fertile (en fleur) and yielding ready harvests to sustain a person. The poets who will imagine and create this new rhetoric are not the eceaion of an old ahoi, no n Vigile o n

86 Paul et Virginie, 251. 153 Thocie, b moe geneall de Vigile, who open out to writers of similar talent.

The creative standard is carefully chosen to highlight two poets known for their pastoral works, suggesting that New World creativity is grounded in the enchanted harmony of humankind living in accordance with natures providence.

This quest for a new rhetoric to represent a re-enchanted human existence in harmony with nature invites European readers into this new conceptualization. Saint-

Pierres intended audience was not limited to inhabitants of colonial territories; he very explicitly engaged with printing and publishing in Europe and for French-speaking

European subscribers and buyers of his books. I argue that the novel works to frame and naturalize a perspective represented as originating in the world outside of civilized/metropolitan Europe. Saint-Pierre despairs of harmony in the corrupted space of continental civilization, and instead seeks to invite readers to imagine and instantiate the redemption of a harmonious Golden Age through a new beginning in the New World.

As we have just seen, one part of the novels imaginative enchantment work is performed through the readers act of interpreting the text. Another aspect of this enchantment work involves the sentimental communication conveyed through the engraved images. Attending to the illustrations in the novel can help us better understand the novels capacity to change the readers manner of thinking about nature via the mode of sentiment.

154

Fige 2.3. Engaing Nafage de Viginie b Bahlem Joeph Flcan Roge afe a daing b Piee-Pal Pdhon. 1806 Dele ediion of Paul et Virginie. Image Soce: Biih Liba, C.156.k.7.

155 Illustrations as sentiment mode thinking tools in Paul et Virginie Benadin de Sain-Piee e dipla an nal degee of aaene of he a of eal moden pin cle. The aho i highl conean ih he deail of he pine caf, hich aaene ill come o pla an ee moe obio ole ih he pblicaion of he 1806 dele eion of Paul et Virginie. Hoee, een in he 1788 ediion of tudes de la nature conaining Paul et Virginie, Sain-Piee da hi eade aenion o he afl deail of he phical objec of he book. In he paae Avis sur cette troisime dition [Noice on hi hid ediion], he ae ha he ha impoed he

ali of he eade epeience a an inceaed podcion co: Jen ai fai epace n pe pl le mo, afin den ende la lece pl colane, ce i agmene chae

olme enion dne feille dimpeion.87 He conine, Comme le oie e le papie dimpimeie on pl che e le anne denie, M. Dido le jene, ma agmen le fai dimpeion de cee diion de pl dn iime, e ce d papie dn ing-deime. He finihe hi ecion ih a jificaion fo he highe co o

he eade b noing ha i i de o he geae bea and legibili of he book, ih

he moe flid lee pacing and he olme ae pined ih a moe beaifl fon,

ing a feh e of moable pe. Sain-Piee i aae of ho an olde, ed e of moable pe chaace ofen ha nick and fla ha ma he bea (and poeniall conibe o he mieading) of he pined e. He h ini ha je lai fai impime aec le bea caace nef de M. Dido le jene, afin e le paion conib li concilie la bieneillance gnale.88 Noe ha i i he epaion of he fon ha

87 Études de la nature, 1:i. 88 Études de la nature, 1:vi. 156 ill gain paie fo he pine. The poeie aibing he ne beaifl chaace a belonging o Piee-Fanoi Dido gge ha i i eihe a feh ne phical e of moeable pe he ha acied o an alogehe ne peface Dido ha deigned. I i indeed he lae a no onl ee eeal geneaion of he Dido famil highl

ccefl pine, he ceaed peface cedied a he beginning of moden

pogaph.89

Persuasive text relies on both discursive and figural elements to communicate to and to activate the reader, using the power of figurative language to convey stronger

truth values to those things gestured at obliquely. Images can be persuasive in the same way, creating a sense of truth by communicating things that cannot be said as powerfully or succinctly in words. We find confirmation of just such an authorial use of image in

Malcom Cooks recent assessment of Saint-Pierres involvement with the visual elements of his books; He [Saint-Pierre] goes beyond the expectation of the written text, suggesting images that would be provocative [ ] on occasions perhaps improving the moral nature of the novel by images that underline the meaning of the text by providing a

iking ial image ha he e ielf cold no epodce.90

A ih he ohe ok died hee, Paul et Virginie pecificall inclde engaing. I a common in eal moden pinhop ha he pine commiioned o

eleced illaion ih lile o no inp fom he aho. Th, ofen he elaionhip

89 See the background given on the Didot family in Gerard Unge, The Tpe of François-Ambroise Didot and Pierre-Louis Vafflard. A Further Investigation into the Origins of the Didones, Quaerendo 31, no. 3 (September 2001): 16591. doi:10.1163/157006901X00047. 90 Malcolm Cook, Pal e Viginie: Embellihing he Te, The Modern Language Review 114, no. 1 (2019): 34. 157 beeen e and image a no ighl haped b ahoial inen. Hoee, in each of

he ok in o d, he aho were inoled in pecifing and ceaing he illaion. In he peface o Paul et Virginie, Benadin de Sain-Piee aleed eade

o he eac illaion (and b hich ai) he hold epec o find in ahenic copie of hi noel. I e he od authentic becae Sain-Piee dedicae mch of

he Ai cee ediion (1789 ediion) and he peamble of he 1806 dele ediion o dicing he financial loe he ffeed fom ncplo conefeiing of hi book.

Jaai po de gande pee dan la Rolion po n homme n aec bien pe de fone [ ] Le conefaon maaien fai n o conidable.91 Theefoe, Sain-

Piee ake pain in he paae o decibe fo hi fe eade he illaion fnihed b Moea le Jene, deinae d Cabine d Roi, and Vene, i, de o le peine, a le mie di le hamonie gnale de la nae.92

Thee illaion can h be een a moe han incidenal decoaion.93 The

eed mliple ppoe, boh inenal o he ok and a an ani-piac aeg. Fo he fncion ihin he ok, e can ak ha paicla effec i coneed o he

eade/iee hen e i paied ih ial epeenaion?94 Hee again, ahe han anale eaon and imaginaion, e and image, a bina oppoie, I eek o ndeand

91 Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Piee, Pamble, Paul et Virginie, (Paris: Didot lAîné, 1806), vii. 92 Saint-Piee, Ai cee édition, Paul et Virginie (Paris: De lImprimerie de Monsieur, 1789), xi-xii. 93 Fo a moe nanced appeciaion of he poiie apec of ornamentation in the eighteenth century, ee Ma Sheiff, Decoaing Knoledge: The Onamenal Book, he Philoophic Image and he Naked Th, Art History 28, no. 2 (2005), 151-73. 94 See Norman Bryson, Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Régime, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 158 he ok in o d hogh a paadigm ha admi boh eaon and imaginaion

imlaneol, and necessaril so. Thi appoach, I gge, i moe in keeping ih he

eigning pistm of he eigheenh cen ha eied pio o he aiigh epaaion beeen aiic and cienific caegoie ha o moden diciplina diide eie.95

The illaion e encone in Paul et Virginie and man ohe eigheenh- cen e alo foce o confon a eion of epaaion. Do he image meel coei ih he e in he book in hich he ae fond, o i hee an inegaing inepla beeen e and image? In Word and Image, Noman Bon age ha all

ial ok ei on a coninm beeen he pole of he figaie and he lieal elemen, hee he figaie ha he poe o die home he effec of he eal. In

hei ok on diagam, John Bende and Michael Mainan conibe o o

ndeanding of figali b popoing ha diagam ae image ha fncion diffeenl a hinking ool. Thei ok gge ha comple image can be a fom of ial hinking hee od, pice, fige, and fomla combine ogehe o elici a epone of imaginaion o fill in gap of epeenaion, h ceaing knoledge podcion ih he acie paicipaion of he obee.

Thee poefl die hae helped o hape o hinking abo he inepla beeen e and image. The ho ho neiling and embellihing knoledge in he eigheenh cen ee no o epaae pocee; he ee ineicabl inedependen. The poefl pefomaii of he engaed illaion deie fom

95 In his 1959 essay, C.P. Snow argued that disciplinary specialization has created a lasting cultural split between domains of humanities and sciences. C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 159 he abili of he figal image o nmake and emake he old in eade mind.96 The epeience of hee eigheenh-cen e-image objec change he condiion of poibili fo hogh.

Changing he a hi eade peceied he old a e mch pa of Sain-

Piee pojec. In a d of Sain-Piee piae coepondence ih he ai

Anne-Loi Giode (lae called Giode-Tioon) fo he illaion in he dele ediion of 1806, Malcolm Cook conclde ha boh Benadin and Giode ee e of

he abili of a o peade and o edcae.97 Wih hi noel, Sain-Piee eek o conince and eleae hi eade, in boh e and image. The commnicaion in ial fom i comple and deabiliing. Wha a fi appea o be he meage poaed can,

pon fhe eaminaion, fagmen nde he enion of oppoiion beeen an appaen sstme and a eealed enimen. Thogh he eno eading of ial media, Paul et

Virginie iniiae he eade/iee ino anohe epeience of knoledge and compleifie hoe paage peened in boh e and ial fom. We ee hi iniiaion a ok in he fonipiece of he fi ediion of Paul et Virginie pined a a epaae noel apa fom he tudes.

96 For greater discussion of the idea of Enlightenment performativity, see Daniel Brewer, The Discourse of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-century France: Diderot and the Art of Philosophizing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 97 Malcom Cook, Benadin de Sain-Piee and Giode: Illaing he l Edition of Paul et Virginie, The Modern Language Review 102, no. 4 (2007), 988. 160

Fige 2.4. Engaing Pal e Viginie b Abaham Giade afe a daing b Moea le jene. 1789 ediion of Paul et Virginie. Image oce: Uniei de Monal, Collecion eampe e illaion ancienne. 161

The 1789 ediion of Pal e Viginie i pblihed epaael and conain fo engaing, each of hich highligh emoional paage fom he noel. Ineeingl, he fi plae ee a a o of enicemen o ead he noel. Tha plae come befoe he

ile page and feae Pal and Viginie a childen, alking apped in ha appea o be a blanke and epeing a ong emoion hile looking cona-bod a an adl male fige eneing he fame fom lef ih ome objec in hand. The fige of he man

iding focefll ino he fame appea omeha heaening. Thi engaing i iled

impl PAUL & VIRGINIE (Voe page 21 e 22). Tiled in a minimal fahion, ih a

efeence o pecific page, he illaion poide he eade ih fe cle o inepe

he image a hi poin. The clee ai of he engaing depic ambigo emoion on he face of he childen. I i clea he hae a ong emoion, ih open moh, b i i no ceain hehe i i fea, pie, o jo a he look o he male fige oeaking hem. The man face i in hado and i i difficl o dicen hi epeion.

Hi lef hand i aied, elbo ben a if he i abo o eend i in a gee o o ike he childen. A conflic beeen childen and an adl male i bond o incie he eade o pojec him- o heelf ino he cene o inepe he experience of ha momen, mch moe effeciel han old a enion-fee, nambigo image of o childen alking

ogehe. The image fncion a a o of iniiaion of he eade ino a mode of inepeing heein epeiencing he eidence of a paage o ceae an ndeanding on an affecie leel ahe han on a pel inellecal leel in he h mode of

enimen ahe han debaable fac of a sstme.

162 Sain-Piee conined o ine hi ime and mone ino impoing he engaing in fe ediion of he noel, commnicaing feenl ih he ai, paiclal fo he dele ediion of 1806. In hi ediion e find no onl moe efined engaing echnie, b moe comple epeenaion and eflecion on idea cenal o

he paoal hamon of he noel pojec. One ch eample ende an ambigo and deabiliing depicion of he opic pojec of he paoal gene and he heo of poidence of nae. The plae depicing he childhood of he o poagoni eoke mliple lae of jdgmen in he eade a he ial eno epeience ceae conaing meaning beeen fi impeion and final impeion.

163

Fige 2.5. Engaing Enfance de Pal e de Viginie b Bogeoi de la Richadie afe a daing b Lafie. 1806 dele ediion of Paul et Virginie. Image Soce: Bibliohe Naionale de Fance.

A Sain-Piee conined o efine and pblih ne ediion of Paul et Virginie in

he folloing ea, he illaion hapen he oppoiion beeen Eopean claical cle and he e-haped heoic he eek o eeal hogh he epeience of life in he ne land of colon and empie. The poai foma image occpie mo of he page and

164 i neal copped ih no onamenal faming o bode. Diecl beneah he image in a ligh ialic cip ae he aibion fo he o ai, Dein pa Lafie on he lef and Ga pa Bogeoi de la Richadie on he igh. The ai name ae no

edced o ch a mall ie ha he old be difficl o ake in b he iee. The ai ae h accoded a place of impoance in he ok. Belo he ai name ae

o line of e. The op line i he ile of he plae, ENFANCE DE PAUL ET DE

VIRGINIE. gien in all capial lee in a colonnade-le face. Belo i a bile,

Dj le me palaien de le maiage le becea. In he 1806 ediion, hi plae follo page 14, eal in he noel on a page hee Sain-Piee peak of he

implici of he o Fench omen poagoni, Mme de la To and Mageie.

Mai elle e endaien aemen la ille de pe d e mpie, pace elle

aien e de goe oile blee d Bengale comme de eclae.98 Thei implici

eem o find a jofl echo in he faihfl adoaion of hei lae, Maie and Dominge:

A peine Maie e Dominge le apeceaien [ ] il accoaien ja ba de la monagne po le aide la emone. Elle liaien dan le e de le eclae la joie il aaien de le eoi.99 Hoee, in he engaing he lae do no face he

iee; he ae he onl fige hoe epeion ae hidden fom . In addiion,

Maie and Dominge occp aea of he compoiion boh in foegond and backgond ha ae no in he cene of aenion, hei dake fige eceding ino he

hado o he bh of he field in hich he ae placed. The iee gae fi ake in he fige of Mme de la To and Mageie, iaed cene in he middle gond.

98 Paul et Virginie, 1806 edition, 14. 99 Paul et Virginie, 1806 edition, 14. 165 The compoiion of he image place he lage and moe efined-appeaing of he o

Fench omen a he cene of eeal diagonal ae fomed b he o loping oofline,

he lope of he monain, he ide a of he bake Maie i eaing, and he dape of fabic fom he cadle o he maenal fige lap. Thi poiion, a he ineecion of

eeal line in he image, einfoce he fige impoance in he compoiion. She i

aged a he cene, eaed and eing one foo highe han he ohe on a lab of one, clohed in daping fabic ha i eminicen of fige of claical anii. He maenal chaace i einfoced b he epoed bea, ncoeed b he gap of he bab on he lap. He bae fee again ecall a ial langage of claical anii, feaing a foo ih Geek oe. In he loe igh foegond hee i a all ae led afe a Geek amphoa. A fi glance, he image cone a eene ene of claical maeni.

Hoee, he hamon of hee claical elemen i obled a one gae conine o follo he image compoiion ino he deail. While hee ae een hman fige, none look in he iee diecion. All he hman gae in he image ae eihe dieced a anohe peon ho i looking elehee in n, o ele hei gae i o

ome ok a hand. Thi i a lile ocie ha i elf-conained, j a Sain-Piee depic in he noel.

Thi cene of maeni gge a poenial ineeal image b Leonado da

Vinci The Vigin and Child ih S. Anne, cica 1503.100 The paining depic he

100 Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, c 1503, Oil on wood, H.: 1.68 m.; L.: 1.30 m., c 1503, Louvre, www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/virgin- and-child-saint-anne. 166 Vigin Ma eaed on he lap of he mohe, S. Anne. The boh look don loingl a

he Chi child ho Ma i holding a he child eache o o pla ih a lamb. The naaie echoe go fa beond imila heme o bjec. Willad Spiegelman ee in he paining a ie conepoin o he Chi fe acificial ac in he Paion, and in he pe-agic momen, a moemen of emoion fom hman o he naal old, efleced back b he doble figaion of he innocen Chi, a child and a lamb. Spiegelman decibe hi; A genl enegeic flo of he life foce eend fom S. Anne, he lage, olde and highe fige, don hogh he gandchild, o he animal and plan

old belo he. The o omen gae don in onde a he child; he child and he lamb ae boh looking p.101 The da Vinci paining alo ho he poignanc of hi

ende ablea foehadoing a fe agic een. Spiegelman conine, Wiho knoing he o, a iee old ame ha i depic, ih delicae hmo, domeici and of feeling. Sch endene me aged fo a momen, and hen deepen i.

The appaen idllic ali of he engaing in Pal e Viginie of he mohe and childen a fi blh i fhe deabilied b he fige of he black lae. Maie i depiced o of cale a malle han he Fench omen, and he i ben oe he ok, hand holding he enion of he eed in place o eae he bake. The mclae of he back i j appaen hogh he de, hining a habiaion o had ok. Whee

Mme de la To hai i baided and ied ih a ibbon in a claical le, Maie hai i

101 Willad Spiegelman, Unfinihed Pefecion, Wall Street Journal, July 30, 2010, sec. Life and Style, www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487045965045752 72681406945388. 167 bond in a moe heail paened cloh, in a le bee ied o ei diheelmen in

ok. J oe Maie holde, half hidden in hado, e finall find a fige looking back a he iee; i i a goa. The goa ee ae diecl a he iee, lighl ide in a hin of hea o challenge. I i a omeha dibing elemen of he image.

Dominge fige in hi engaing i alo endeed b elemen ha compee fo pominence and eie inepeaion. He i oking he field behind he coage, baefoo and hile, caing ha appea o be a bake of gain o eed. He i foen akadl in mid-ide, oing gain. Hi bod i ied aa fom he

pecao, b in an odd conoion fo he placemen of leg and am, a if pied in

he middle of he acion b anohe fige eneing he cene in he fa backgond. The

mall fige eneing he field hogh a gap in he fence appea o hae a aff, hoe, o

ifle in hi hand. Baed on le of clohing and compleion, he appea o be Eopean.

While hee i anohe hoe on he gond nea hi male fige, i i difficl o ell fom hi bod poe if he i a helpe o an nepeced iio. O gae ma come o e on

Dominge eeal ime o o eole he image of gain floing fom hi hand in he ac of oing. The eam of gain fom hi hand i lighl oo dene, giing i he appeaance of a hip. The conoed bod of he black lae ielding ha appea o be a hip and facing a Eopean ceae a enion in he image ha belie he fi impeion of hamon. The plae ma a fi appea o be a claical o, enconced in eoic landcape ih palm ee, opical floe, and hibic plan, b i ell a o moe complicaed han ha of a anplaned opia.

The e on he facing page, inclding he paage abo imple eening oine,

ok o ceae a epeenaion of he imple jo of hamonio ocie liing cloe o

168 he ie of nae. Thi eeming accepance of lae in he depicion of he happ chaace of Maie and Dominge i a oce of confion fo ciic ho noe Sain-

Piee definie ani-lae one in hi Voage lle de France.102 A he end of he

Voage, Sain-Piee gie he decipion of hi encone ih a gop ho ha j

aided a camp of ecaped lae. The gline of hi encone nael he paadie image Sain-Piee ha j conemplaed, Hla! Le bea paage dipa, je ne i pl ne ee abominable.103 Th, he amalgamaion of lae and mae ih hip in he fige of Dominge ceae a cogniie dionance heeb he eade m e- ealae he opic depicion epeened in he e of he peio page. Hee, a

enimen i iall coneed o he eade/iee ha ndemine an appaen

epeenaion of a ne em of ocieal hamon. Neihe appea o negae o dominae he ohe, b he occp he ame pace in nea balance. Doe he epeience lead he eade o cleal ejec one o he ohe of he pole held in enion hee? Pehap like he bake ha Maie eae, enion ceae he pace hee he elemen can ok ih and again each ohe o ceae omehing efl. Rahe han appeal in plain em fo a diffeen paadigm of ocial oganiaion and appoach o naal eoce, he e and image lead he eade o aemp o eole he enion he o he ene iniiel in he image and alliel in he heoical fige. J a Je

en; donc jeie m p Sain-Piee epiemological fondaion, an indiidal

102 Robin Howells noe [Saint-Pierre] philosophical position, however, is not entirely consistent. While apparently calling slavery un principe trs injuste, he also says Je conviens que les lois humaines le permettent in he aicle Bernardin de Saint- Pierres Founding Work: The Voyage a Lîle de France. The Modern Language Review 107, no. 3 (2012), 764. 103 Saint-Pierre, Voage lle de France, 304. 169 m ene and eole he blend of impeion o aie a hamon, ing ficion-baed experience a a a of ndeanding ia sentiment.

Conclusion Beginning ih he each fo an adeae decipion of he comple ecolog of a abe plan, Sain-Piee i led eenall o complee hi tudes de la nature in a paoal ficion iaed on a edan iland. Afll deploing he open decei of ficional fom, Sain-Piee aemp o commnicae a h abo hman ecolog.

Idllic hamon in he hea of a cop colonial ocie limael poe nable, and naaie fame collape aond he hipeck demie of Viginie, he cenal chaace.

Hoee, in a ok ha inenionall fncion hogh he mode of enimen, ha epeience of lo i he hole poin, aiing he h ale b hifing i ino a figal dicoe ha i felt and emain in he mind a jdgmen and opinion. Sain-Piee h popoe ha he h of nae i bee commnicaed a ol-aifing sentiment and no in dienchaning and de-mifing inellecal sstme.

I a noel mificaion? Paul et Virginie i no an accae decipion of he iland of hich Sain-Piee himelf ha fi-hand obeaion and eidence. And e

he noel i hi aemp o ell a ceain kind of h hogh figal hinking on he leel of affec. The noel i an aemp o ell a h abo he hman condiion. A h abo

Eopean ocie a een fom iho in he mio of colonialim. A h abo hmankind in elaion ih he diine, hogh hich one cold kno he diine hogh poidence manifeed in nae. Sain-Piee age an nable hamon. The lile

ocie elie on lae labo, b poa he lae a aified hman animal, likened

o dog. The childen en a naa lae o he mae, nael oliciing nlikel 170 pomie of padon and lenienc. Pal and Viiginie childhood innocence i mied ih an incompaible copion of pepeaing onehip of ohe hman being. The moal

o of childhood in Eden i foehadoed b hi incompaibili ha i moohed oe b an appeaance of empah and appeal o he lae one o ea hi lae ih moe kindne.

The enion I hae eealed and analed in he peceding page i peened b

Sain-Piee afll. The polalen em Afl i an epeion ha, in he cae of

hi noel, epeen he co-peence of o heoical aegie ha ae ofen emploed

ogehe in eigheenh-cen e (echnical kill and cnning decei). Hoee, hi combinaion eem incompaible ih ideal of Enlighenmen, paiclal he inclion of ome fom of decei. A Adono and Hokheime ae ccincl, he pogam of he

Enlighenmen a he dienchanmen of he old: he diolion of mh and he

biion of knoledge fo fanc.104 If e can appeciae he hman need o be coninced o peaded on he affecie leel a ell a on a aional leel, hen e ma come o ee ppoefl imlaion a an ambigol alable ool o diole mh and

eplace i ih a ne h.

Ye a e hae een, a and aifice ee omeime joined in nable amalgamaion in eigheenh-cen iing o podce a kind of h/knoledge

hogh he ceaion of an epeience of ha knoledge in he eade.105 Jace-Heni

104 Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 253. 105 For a discussion of the corporeal responses to reading in the eighteenth century, see Natania Meeker, Voluptuous Philosophy: Literary Materialism in the French Enlightenment (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006). 171 Benadin de Sain-Piee e o o ie a gea ok of naal hio b a ck b he dilemma of ho o popel epeen ch a a bjec hich eade ea caegoiaion ihin hman-ceaed sstmes. Fo Sain-Piee, em eneain he inellec, b he no do jice o he fel h (sentiment) of a old eplee ih diine poidence.

In contemplating the truth of his natural observations and the rejection by critics of some of his ideas, such as his theory of ocean tides, the systematic limitations of the natural history genre proved too constraining. In order to properly represent the truths he observed of the world and the providence of nature, his text needed the freedom of fiction to say anything, but more than that, the capacity of fiction to figure a certain kind of truth.

The act of reading is performatively enchanting. Where his scientific treatise on tides did not convince, a novel about humanity in relation with nature might. The pastoral genre affords this text to spring to life in our mental representations from its sources in travel data and natural history description. The pastoral genre provides a structure of harmonious relationship between humankind and nature. Re-enchantment aims to recover the lost Golden Age, when human and divine co-existed and things were good.

The sentimental access of the fictional form allows this author to bring the Études de la nature to a close, each work a partner of the other. This pairing works to gesture somewhere between système and sentiment for the reader, to create complex representation performed in the act of reading. The felt truth that may change the readers perception of nature and humanity is not to be found on the pages of the novel nor of the natural history, but is rather indexed by the figurative language of the novel.

172 Perhaps it is our questioning response to this enchanting effect Paul et Virginie has on a reader that has kept this novel continuously in print since 1788.

Binding ogehe in enion concep ch a sstme and sentiment, he em e- enchanmen offe ichl eading aene fo aneing o moden eion,

Ho doe a paoal noel complee a naal hio in he eigheenh cen?

173 Chapter Three History of the Two Indies: A Singular Tale with Multiple Voices History and Philosophy Collide in the Histoire des deux Indes

lHistoire des deux Indes dénonce les méfaits du christianisme et des religions constituées, mais conserve une transcendance religieuse qui fonde un système de valeurs, dépassant les intérêts individuels ou nationaux et garantissant un avenir meille, ne oi l je.1

Michel Delon, Lappel au lecteur dans lHistoire des deux Indes.

Introduction

In the latter half of the eighteenth century, Abbé Guillaume-Thomas Raynal

(1713-1796) would finally claim authorship of the controversial Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes

(commonly referred to as the Histoire des deux Indes), the fifth best-selling book of the eighteenth century, going through an astounding forty-eight editions in twenty-five years.2 Printing his name and engraved portrait on the title pages of the third edition in

1780 secured his claim as author as well as his condemnation and subsequent flight from

France.3

1 Michel Delon, Lael a lece dan lHioie de de Inde, in Lectures de Raynal: L'Histoire des deux Indes en Europe et en Amérique au XVIIIe siècle: Actes du colloque de Wolfenbüttel, ed. Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Manfred Tietz (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1991), 65. 2 Anoush Terjanian notes that the Histoire des deux Indes sold more copies than Adam Smih Wealth of Nations eight times over. Anoush Fraser Terjanian, Commerce and Its Discontents in Eighteenth-Century French Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 1718. See Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best- Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York: WW. Norton & Company, 1996), 63. 3 For more on the official and controversial reaction to the Histoire des deux Indes, see Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 431-34. 174 The Histoire des deux Indes (HDI) was conceived by Abbé Raynal as an encyclopedic history of the colonial and commercial efforts of the major European powers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From the outset the HDI was intended to be an examination of not only the projects of colonial expansion, but also the principles. Drawing from an extensive network of well-placed contacts, collaborators

(including Denis Diderot), and previously published works, Raynal worked to compile an extensive account of European efforts to expand empires and build wealth for the nation.

But beyond creating a detailed historical account of imports and the cost of supports to maintain the supply lines, this history book (so voluminous that it is always published in multiple volumes), interrogates the history it records in an attempt to reconcile the practice of colonial commerce with the emerging values of European Enlightenment.

Raynal poses the question lEurope a fondé par-tout des colonies; mais connoît-elle les

incie leel on doi le fonde?4 This sentence, in the introductory sequence of Book I, remains largely unchanged from the first edition to the third. In questioning the European approach to colonization, Raynal and his coauthors are also questioning the principles of how to approach writing a history thereof.

This chapter explores the polyphonic writing of the HDI as a creative strategy that

4 The text is presented here in its original form, complete with eighteenth-century spelling and printing practices as much as possible to present the text as it would have been encountered by a contemporary reader. Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, ed. Anhon Sgnell e al. (Pai: Cene Inenaional dde d XVIIIe Siècle, 2010), 1:2. Hereinafter referred to as Histoire des deux Indes or abbreviated to HDI. Unless otherwise noted, page references are to the 1780 Pellet edition upon which the 2010 critical edition is based and for which it also retains the page numbering. 175 combines a cliometric historical mode and a creative fictional mode.5 The Histoire published by Raynal was, in fact, compiled from multiple sources, chief among them

Diderot who contributed ever-increasing portions from the first edition to the third. In the two main authorial voices (Raynal and Diderot), we will trace the tension between writing history and writing to change the course of history. Focusing on the fragmentary nature of this text and elucidating the multi-author origins of different passages of the

HDI, I examine the effects of a text purporting to have a single author but embodying several. Through this analysis, we will see how internal tensions in the text and images complicate the concepts of colony and commerce to undermine acceptance of the status quo. Michèle Duchet indicates the authors conflicting priorities concerned the opposition between form and content: lessentiel pour Raynal était linformation, et non lécriture ou la composition.6 In particular, I examine the resonances between Raynals and Diderots voices, which I take to stand for reductive and generative forces in the text, joined in productive opposition. The Histoire des deux Indes is a work that has been appreciated more as an informational, historical text while its literary figurative language often seen as ornamentation. In this chapter, I argue that this either/or classification is inadequate to account for the paradigm change the text attempts to undertake.

5 Cliometrics is the method of applying economic theory and quantitative analysis to historical data in contrast to prior methods of economic history which tend to rely on qualitative and narrative methods. Cliometrics was developed in the 1960s and thus I am applying it anachronistically. The referentiality to Clio, the Greek muse of history and poetry, who chastised Aphrodite for her passion is intriguing. 6 Michle Dche, LHioie de de Inde: oce e ce dn ee olhonie, in Lectures de Raynal: L'Histoire des deux Indes en Europe et en Amérique au XVIIIe siècle: Actes du colloque de Wolfenbüttel, ed. Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Manfred Tietz (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1991), 10. 176 I will be using the twin concepts of disenchantment and re-enchantment to read the HDI and to extend our understanding of the oppositions in the text to which these two terms refer.7 This approach will allow us specifically to lift out for examination the threads of critique of traditional authority found in tandem with epistemological reshaping. As in the other chapters of this dissertation, we shall examine what results from the amalgamation of two very different rhetorical modes in a text of the French

Enlightenment.

The writing in the HDI functions to solicit a change in the eading bjec thinking through a sentimental mode of understanding. The engraved illustrations work in andem o ceae a ial and figal eeience o di he eade/iee epistemic certainty via the access of sentiment. An example of this sentimental operation, according to Michel Delon, is the interjection of apostrophe in a history rather than the more typical use of harangue, which would have fit better with the norms of the historical genre at the time.8 A harangue creates distance between the narrator and the reader, who is construed to be part of a group that is being lectured to. The harangue is a formal speech addressed to an assembly, while an aoohe i a rhetorical figure in which the speaker addresses a dead or absent person [] the term could also denote a speakers turning to address a particular member or section of the audience.9

7 See Chapter one or the Introduction for our detailed discussion of conceptual framework of disenchantment and re-enchantment and how we are using it in this dissertation. 8 See Michel Delon, Lael a lece dan lHioie de de Inde, in Lectures de Raynal: L'Histoire des deux Indes en Europe et en Amérique au XVIIIe siècle : Actes du colloque de Wolfenbüttel, ed. Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Manfred Tietz (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1991), 53-66. 9 Ofod Diciona of Liea Tem, 4h ed., .. Aoohe. 177 Importantly, the definition also stresses that apostrophe is usually employed for emotional emphasis. Thus, in breaking with the conventions of history writing to address the reader, the text uses a form that creates a more personal intersubjectivity than the expected harangue would. Additionally, apostrophe interrupts the normal flow of simple transfer of information. This interruption shifts the writing from a certain performance of the position of narrator and reader to a different set of positions, displacing the reader virtually and emotionally. To take but one example of this double movement from the

Histoire des Deux Indes,

Lecteurs, dont les âmes sensibles viennent de sépanouir de joie au récit de m imle e de la agee d goenemen de Binaoe [] vous êtes sans doute expatriés plus dune fois par la pensée, pour devenir les témoins de la vertu et partager le bonheur de ce recoin du Bengale.10

The text works to expatriate the reader in thought, not simply to indulge in imaginary tourism, but to plunge him or her in the figural experience of a virtuous, simple, and felicitous deontological position. In so doing, the text creates two sorts of virtual experiences for the reader or two sorts of subjectivities. The reader lives a temporary virtual displacement into a different society with its sentimental effects, and also is called back to a critical position of detached viewing from a certain distance.

Engaging the reader more powerfully through apostrophe represents a disruption in the history genre writing norms through figurative language. The aim of this chapter is to examine critically instances of these occurrences and the consequences of the tension between a historical mode and a figural fictional mode.

10 HDI, 1:353 178 These different modes represent competing truth regimes in dialogue throughout the work. Lorna Weir has conceptualized Focal term gime de ei from his

1979 interview in Critique of Anthropology.11 Weir defines truth regimes as chaaceied b multiple, irreducible truth formulae that co-exist and sometimes vie for dominance. A truth formula stabilizes a network of elements: a relation between representation and presentation (words and things), truth and non-truth, and the place of the subject in discourse.12 We observe this struggle to establish stability in the tension between a truth regime grounded in the discourse of politics and a truth regime in the discourse of philosophy. The way these regimes compete to claim a new regime of truth, non-truth, and the place of the subject is the central animating force for the writing and publication of the HDI. To understand this dynamic at work, let us consider the context and publication of the HDI.

The publication history of The History of the Two Indies The hee incial ediion of he HDI ha ae conideed ahoiaie ee edied and blihed b Ranal ding hi lifeime, hogh hee ee alo man

anlaion and nahoied coie ined. The fi ediion of he HDI, in 1770, a

blihed anonmol in i ocao olme, liing Amedam a he lace of

blicaion, hogh i a likel ined in Fance.13 I a common acice in

11 “Truth and Power: An Interview with Michel Foucault,” Critique of Anthropology 4, no. 13–14 (January 1979): 131–37. 12 Lorna Weir, “The Concept of Truth Regime,” The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers Canadiens de Sociologie 33, no. 2 (2008): 367. 13 A well-documented account of the publication history for the HDI can be found in Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 425-27. 179 eigheenh-cen Fance o aibe lace of blicaion falel o Amedam, hee cenohi eicion ee looe, in ode o aoid he coneence of ining a conoeial book o one fo hich oe ahoiaion had no been obained. The fi ediion did no make mch of an imac, and Ranal e abo imoing and adding o i, anonmol blihing a econd ediion in 1774, and hen a hid ediion in 1780 hich finall cedied Ranal ih he ahohi. Wih each cceie ediion, he ok became moe adacio in i ciicim of colonial abe and he inhmani of lae.

The 1780 ediion a ined in Genea b Jean-Lonad Pelle and conied of o foma; in-ao ih fo olme of e l a fifh olme of ma, a ell a an in-

8 e of en olme ih an addiional olme of ma. The 1780 ediion i conideed

he mo comlee and ee a he bai fo he ciical ediion being blihed b he

Cene inenaional dde d XVIIIe icle.14

While Abb Ranal finall had hi name ined on he ile age of he hid ediion, he ok comie he effo of man ee and ie, comiled ogehe

ih and iho he knoledge and emiion of hoe aho (he conce of aho

igh being ill inchoae a hi ime).15 Unde he banne of one ile, he eade encone aage fom a ide aa of collaboao and a e ha i a ime in

14 The general introduction to this critical edition also gives a wealth of information about the different editions and variants. Guillaume-Thomas Raynal et al., Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, 2 vols. (Ferney-Volaie: Cene inenaional dde d XVIIIe siècle, 2010), xxxiv-xlvii. I will refer to this critical edition as the HDI 2010. 15 Beaumarchais is one of the founders of modern d dae, see for example his legislative lobbying efforts in 1791. Pierre-Auguste Caron de Beaumarchais, Pétition Aebe aae: ce a de de ae, a e directeurs de spectacles (Pai: LImimeie de D Pon, 1791). 180 conflic ih ielf aco an immene eane oaling 2,625 age.

Larger works with a number of collaborators contributing from their specialty were no ncommon a he ime. Dideo and dAlembe Encycopédie is a chief example, as well as Bffon Histoire naturelle and other reference works. Contributors to the HDI are known to have included Alexandre Deleyre, Jean-Joseph Pechmeja, and

Antoine-Laurent Jussieu, among others.16 However, one of the most prolific contributors and whose role has drawn considerable scholarly attention is Denis Diderot.17 Since the late 1700s it was reputed that there existed at least two copies of the HDI that had been marked up to show the text contributed by Diderot, as indicated by Diderot himself or his daughter, Marie-Angélique de Vandeul, but those copies appeared to have either been destroyed or never really existed.18 In 1957 Hans Wolpe lamented that even with the discovery of the fonds Vandeul Diderot manuscripts, these copies of the HDI which were mentioned in correspondence seemed to have been lost.19 However, in 2015 the

Bibliothèque Nationale de France arranged to acquire an in-quarto set of the Histoire des

16 For an elaboration of the many sources of text for the HDI, see Gianluigi Goggi ecion on Ranal e e collaboae in Tome I of he moden ciical ediion HDI 2010, xxx-xxxii. 17 I would refer the reader to some of the foundational studies on this such as Hebe Dieckmann, Le Conibion de Dideo la Coeondance Liaie e l Hioie de De Inde, Ree dHe ae de a Face 51, no. 4 (1951): 417-440; and Michèle Duchet, Dde e "He de de Ide" ce fragmentaire (Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1978). 18 Hebe Dieckmann, The Imoance of he Fond Vandel Manci fo Sdie of Dideo and he Eigheenh Cen, Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 3, no. 8 (1950): 24, https://doi.org/10.2307/3823371. 19 See Gianligi Goggi, La Collaboration de Diderot à lHistoire Des Deux Inde: Ldiion de e conibion, Diderot Studies 33 (2013): 168, a ell a he aendi dedicaed o acing fagmena eidence of Dideo aage, in Han Wole, Raa e a ace de gee: e de de Ide e e efecee, (Sanfod: Sanfod Uniei Pe, 1957), 189. 181 deux Indes from the sale of a privately-held library collection belonging to Alexandre-

Marie-François de Paule de Dompierre dHornoy (1742-1828), an acquaintance of Denis

Diderots.20 This remarkable copy is one that belonged to Mme de Vandeul (née

Diderot) and contains margin markings and an index of the passages contributed by her father. This copy had remained in possession of the Hornoy family and remained unknown to scholars until 2015. In conjunction with this discovery, Glenn Roe at the

Oxford Voltaire Foundation directed an international collaborative project to digitize the three editions of the HDI, opening up the possibility of studying the texts with computational and visualization tools. With funding from the University of Minnesotas

Consortium for the Study of the Premodern World, the Centre for Digital Humanities

Research at the Australian National University, Stanford University Libraries, and The

ARTFL Project at the University of Chicago, the three major editions of the HDI have now been digitized and encoded for search.21 This archival discovery and digital analysis have allowed us to state with a high degree of certainty which passages were contributed by Diderot and which were of Raynals compilation effort in addition to studying how the text evolved from edition to edition with identification of additions, deletions, and modifications with precision down to changes in even a single letter within a word.

20 With this fortuitous discovery, the second tome of the critical edition of the HDI, published in 2018, includes more definitive signaling of those passages written by Diderot. This most recent critical edition is an ongoing effort by a significant international group of scholars. At present, Tome 1 (books 1-5) was published in 2010, Tome 2 (books 6-9) was published in 2018, and the remaining two tomes are still in preparation. 21 The geneo ineface daa ialiaion can be conled o eamine modifications across all three editions. Mitchell Whitelaw and Geoff Hinchcliffe, Ranal Ediion Eloe, Aalian Naional Uniei, acceed August 10, 2019, http://cdhr-projects.anu.edu.au/raynal/. 182 These exciting document discoveries and digital humanities tools have generated much renewed scholarly attention aimed at the different voices that were blended to create the HDI, and into the possibilities for contrasting the subtly divergent positions on colonialism, slavery, and international politics between different contributors and different editions. This effort, as exemplified by recent studies by Gianluigi Goggi and

Anthony Strugnell, has focused largely on isolating and analyzing Diderots contributions. B he 1780 ediion, abo one-hid of he e i conibed b

Dideo.22 However, particularly in the case of Diderot who was a willing and paid collaborator, I suggest that we should analyze the passages in context and consider how the text would have presented itself to an eighteenth-century reader as a single text written by a single author. I wish to complicate this reading, however, by drawing out the internal contradictions to consider them as a feature of the work and not editorial oversight. My proposed approach is to analyze the work as a whole composed with a certain rhetorical tension between declarative and figural discourse. I argue that such a reading can help us to understand the holistic and performative value of what may otherwise appear a disjointed amalgamation of dates, event chronologies, measurements, strategic analysis, and moralizing exhortation, written in several different stylistic

oice.

The two major modes at work in the HDI are the discursive and the figural mode.

22 Prior to the discovery of the Hornoy copy of the HDI, scholars attempted to anif Dideo conibion b eling on infomaion elaed b Jean-Henri Meister in Aux mânes de Diderot (Paris: Volland, 1788) and in the manuscripts in the fonds Vandeul. See alo ecion 5 of Gianligi Goggi, La collaboaion de Dideo l Hioie de De Inde: Ldiion de e conibion, Diderot Studies 33 (2013): 178-82. 183 These modes serve different purposes individually, but together anchor the reader in a new reality. Consider the following two passages from book III of the HDI, in the chapters on Bengal.

Excerpt A

Les Portugais qui abordèrent au Bengale long-tems avant les autres navigateurs de lEurope, sétablirent à Chatigan, port situé sur la frontière dAracan, non loin de la branche la plus orientale du Gange. Les Hollandois qui, sans se commettre avec des ennemis alors redoutables, vouloient avoir part à leur fortune, cherchèrent la rade qui, sans nuire à leur projet, les exposoit le moins aux hostilités. En 1603, ils jettèrent les yeux sur Balassor; & tous leurs rivaux, plutôt par imitation que par des combinaisons bien raisonnées, suivirent cet exemple.23

Excerpt B

Je vous entends. Vous vous écriez avec douleur: Une fable? quoi! il ny a donc que le mal quon dit de lhomme qui soit vrai? Il ny a que sa misère & sa méchanceté qui ne puissent être contestées. Cet être, né pour la vertu, dont il sefforceroit inutilement détouffer le germe quil en a reçu, quil ne blesse jamais sans remords, & quil est forcé de respecter lors même quelle lafflige ou lhumilie, est donc méchant par-tout. Cet être qui soupire sans cesse après le bonheur, la base de ses vrais devoirs & de sa félicité, est donc malheureux par-tout. Par-tout il gémit sous des maîtres impitoyables. Par-tout il tourmente ses égaux, & il en est tourmenté.24

The fi aage (A) commnicae in hid-eon naaie, emloing he imeonal bjec onon il o decibe he Eoean naion and giing no eence

o he oice of he naao ho obee fom a eecie oide he een. The hioical mode een in hi eamle cone een in an eloen a ene, he

Fench a e. Thee een ae emoed fom he eade and naao een

23 HDI, 1:361. 24 HDI, 1:3534. 184 ime becae he ecede ino he a gammaicall. The diance i amlified b he

e of hi eb ene hich i ael ed in oken coneaion and indicae hi o be inellecal iing. Whee he econd ece (B) conain ocabla eaining o emoion, hi fi ece conain imail geogahic and aial em ch a lace name like Bengale, Chaigan, Aacan and ohe. I alo coni of a leical field of geogah ih em like o, fonie, oienale, and ade. The dae 1603 ancho he cedibili of hi aage o an indeendenl eifiable oin of daa. The

ce of hi aage i a imle liing of een o acion: Le Pogai i Le

Hollandai i En 1603, il Figaie langage i almo eniel aben fom he

aage, ih onl jeen le e deiaing fom he declaaie eoio of he

e. Ece A affec he eade onl in eening ne infomaion hich can be

oceed ih eiing menal fameok o add o o coec a eade leaning on hi

bjec.

If e hen ead he econd ece (B), e immediael noe a diffeen one. The text in excerpt B directly addresses the reader in first-person narrative, invoking an imagined dialogue between narrator and reader. With the use of short, incomplete

enence ch a he eion Une fable? and he inejecion oi! a familia and informal tone is set between the two persons. The rhetorical structure of excerpt B develops an entraining rhythm and crescendo effect through the repeated use of pairs of anahoa; il n a e is eeaed ice, beginning he eie, folloed b a ai of ce

e e donc , and conclding he aagah ih he eeiion of a niealiing

Pa-o il. Claiming the reade aenion ih a diec adde (in heoic, an apostrophe) and then cleverly shifting to dialogue with the reader and then to

185 philosophical pronouncement on the condition of humankind, the passage leads one to follow an argumentative position. The readers position is moved from a certain position of admiration (of the kind people of Bisnapore), to outrage that this kind state might be merely fiction, then to dialogue with the narrator and, as the passage shifts the narrators questions into the readers voice in the dialogue, the reader ends up with philosophical pronouncements about the state of humanity coming from his/her dialogic role.

This passage employs figurative language and rhetoric to give the reader a different (and philosophical) experience of self. Reading passage A requires only a passive reception of the information being presented. Reading passage B, the reader confronts another interlocutor and is questioned by him. To formulate a response requires awareness of self and one aide and eacion in dialoge ih he ohe represented by the voice of the narrator. No longer employing a lexical field of geography and nations, excerpt B deploys a lexicon of judgment and existential purpose

ch a bonhe, flici, mie, emod, and e. The combinaion of apostrophic dialogue and semantic field creates the conditions for reflection on self and the greater questions of life and purpose, all the while the reader is aware of the informational substratum that is being held at a remove during this morally transformative interlude. In the end, where does this leave the reader?

The final position to which the passage leads the reader is that of a person who deplores the cruelty of a society where virtue is repressed, contrasted to that of utopic

Bisnapore. In this other society (a European colonial society), one is tormented by superiors and in turn mutually inflicts harm on ones peers, an outcome reminiscent of

Hobbes assessment of the first natural ae of hman ocie a a of all against

186 all.25 Thi aage ocial ciie inole he eade on an affecie leel, o, a e

a in Chae 2, on he leel of hogh knon a ee in eigheenh-cen

Fench. Ho can a eade no feel he eaie foce o eamine ocie and hen deie

he bee alenaie deiced?

Paage B ee he enimenal and moal elaion beeen bjec. Paage

A ceae a diffeen kind of inebjecii hee aaene of he naaie oice i minimied. Thi aage i a d eciaion of fac ih ome imed cae and effec.

The eade eeience he e a a monologe ahe han a dialoge. The oice i one of ahoi and eeie, coched in he elegan hioical haing of he a imle.

Ye boh of hee aage ae aken fom he ame ecion of he HDI, ih no

ignoing of change in aoach, oic, o aho.

Ho i one o econcile he diffeence in one, egie, ocabla, and eading

bjecii beeen hee amle of he ame e? I age ha mainaining and ineeing he dionance beeen he oice of hi ingla e i cenal o i oeaion. Thi i be accomlihed b aoaching he He de de Ide a a liea e ha i, o aend o figaie langage, heoical oeaion, figaion and fom in ode o conide ho hee diffeence in oice and le ihin he e of he HDI ielf make oible a comle ineeie eone in he eade. Anoh

Tejanian i moe focefll hen he ie, amid he mlile oiion i aiclaed, he He mobilied oefl heoical aegie o ojec agenc on

25 See particularly chapters XIII and XIV in Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil (London: Andrew Cooke, 1651). 187 i eade and o aaken hem o acion.26

The nmbe and feenc of he moe engaging aage ch a B inceae fom he fi ediion o he hid. Thi inceae demonae ha he ahoial eam of

Ranal and Dideo fond ha he infomaional oe, ch a in aage A, came lacking and eied a lemen o achiee he aim of hei hiloohical and oliical hio. Boleing he imeonal e ih moe of Dideo emoie and moall imaioned heoic a a aeg o inceae he oe of he e o change he a

eade hogh abo ocie, colonial oe, and commece. Hoee, I old like o da aenion o he fac ha he econd and hid ediion did eie he enie e o

he enimenal, moall-foced figaie le. Wh no eie all he e ino hi aciaing, anfomaie mode b he hid ediion in 1780? I ake hi comoiional choice o indicae ha he declaaie, lieal mode accomlihe omehing imoan fo

he e oo. Boh le of iing ae mainained and ineoen o ceae a dnamic

e fom he admie of o ch aing heoical egime ihin a ingla e.

Pee Jimack age ha hee diffeence in one and le ee a ciical fncion; Inile donc de cheche ne oi nie dan ce lie. Qil agie de

Ranal e ian li-mme, o de Dideo ondan Ranal, e afoi li-mme, no aion ne ie de dconcion [] o ea mi en eion. 27 The e i fll of conadicion and i dialoge ih ielf, fom Dideo ong ani-colonial

26 Anoush Fraser Terjanian, Commerce and Its Discontents in Eighteenth-Century French Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 22. 27 Pee Jimack, Penaion d lie I, 13-20 in Raynal et al., Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Ferney-Volaie: Cene inenaional dde d XVIIIe icle, 2010), 20. 188 diaibe o Ranal modeae admiaion fo heoic coneo and naion ho hae no been dlled ino eakne b l. The mie of oice blended b Ranal comilao ediing leae he e ih hi chaace of eioning. I old eend hi line of eaoning o claim ha he ciical dialoge ceaed i no j aho o aho, b

ahe beeen e o eade.

Ye Beno, hoee, ee mehod o he madne in he HDI and cedi he

ok ih ceaing a moe comle menal eeenaion of he ocial/colonial im b knoingl encomaing he incoheence and confion of conadico aage. In

hi comlei Beno find n me de comoiion [i] ne deai a e i

o n igne de faiblee, mai la ee dne enege i englobe o le confli inene de laan-gade de Lmie.28 In hi ie, he diegen ie ihin he

e ae eeed a a o of clal achie. Thi anali cedi he mainenance of conflicing oice a an inenional feae of he HDI e emhaie i a hioical

ecod.

Mch cholahi ha indeed foced on geneic ciicim, o on he inellecal hio o clal die aec of he HDI, ch a he hio of colonialim and

lae. Hee e ae le concened ih conideing he HDI a an inde o an objecie

eali a a gien momen in ime (if ha o of hioici i een oible), o a

indo ino he a eole ieed ch oic a he ime. B o elain he ccial imac of he HDI o di he eieme concening emie ihin he cone of he

ce de Le, e m eamine he e a a liea objec, focing on an anali

28 Yves Benot, Dde de ae acae (Paris: Maspero, 1981), 11. 189 of he heoical aegie and figaie langage of he HDI in ode o bee

ndeand he eliance of an engaging hiloohical dicoe on a diengaging dicoe of aniaie, maeial hio (a e of hio hich oda e migh call cliomeic).29

I gge ha he dicoe of aniaie oliical hio ma o o conce of dienchanmen and he dicoe of hilooh ih i call o acion ma o e- enchanmen. A e hae demonaed in eio chae, hi heoeical len affod

an eenial ie of he dnamic a ok in ha can oheie be een a a confonding aiing of ooie. One iniging oin of en ino hi dnamic begin

ih he nal doble in he ile of he He de de Ide.

The ile iniiae he eade ino eeiencing and ndeanding he enion beeen hilooh and oliic in he e. The e hef of he fll ile of hi ok i ofen elided fo a moden eade, a e ofen e he conenien and common abbeiaion o call i he He de de Ide, and imilal he H f e

Ide in Englih-langage cholahi. Thi acice i common in Fench a in Englih, and i i ndeandable ince, like man eigheenh-cen book, he fll ile i fa longe han e ae accomed o in o-eigheenh-cen book. Hoee, e gain

alable inigh ino he comle dnamic of he e b a cloe eading of he fll ile and he inela among he em ha comoe i. The He e e

e de abee e d cece de Ee da e de Ide i a ile

29 The Oxford English Dictionary define cliomeic a A echnie fo he interpretation of economic history, based on the statistical analysis of large-scale nmeical daa fom olaion cene, aih egie, and imila oce. 190 comoed of doble ha ill echo hogho he age of he book. The e begin o geneae comlei fom he eade fi conac ih he ile ielf. I i a hio.

Hoee, i i boh hiloohical hio and oliical hio. The bjec of boh hioie i again dobled b foc on boh he eablihmen and he commece.

We noe fo he momen he fac ha eablihmen i lal b commece i no.

Hoee, b i ineacional nae, commece aomaicall imlie a lea o aie.

The agen of he eablihmen and he commece ae again alo mlile de

Eoen. The mlilici of Eoean i no defined, b neceail a lal inole a lea o indiidal. We conine o ead doble a he e end of he ile a ell becae he geogahical locaion i le de Inde, efeing o he Ea Indie and he We Indie. Once again, he objec of aenion doble ince een a ingle one of he Indie locaion i emed in he lal Inde. If hi head fligh of dobling i no enogh, hee i one final doble o nack ha of he oiginal Indie and he land miakenl labelled a ch b Eoean ing o find a ailing oe e o he Indian

bconinen, h a doble of e Indie and a miakenl labelled Indie.

One effec of hi amon of dobling in he ile i ha i i had o ignoe and

li a he ile aigh ino he e. The eade confon an ineeie le in meel ing o ga he bjec of he e. Fom he beginning, he e manife a comlei and a call o ineeaion b eing a fameok of mlile conceal

aiing in dialoge ih each ohe. I o o eeal he hioie e de

abliemen de Eoen dan le Inde oienale a ell a he hioie

e of ch colonial oo, and hen alo he hioie e d cece de Eoen dan le Inde ccdeae, and o on in he aio emaion oible

191 among all he doble gien in he ile. The ile ielf ak he eade o aoach he

ok ih a comle fameok of ineeaion. While a hioie oliie a

omehing eade of he eiod old hae had eeience ih, hee a lile

eceden o gie an idea of ha a hioie e migh be. Wha cold be eeced fom ch a ok?

In he lae eigheenh cen, a ca hio a a ell-eablihed gene; hoee, a ca hio eeen an innoaion.30 Volaie e he em

hioie oliie in hi aicle on hio o deignae a faihfl ecod of gand een, a ooed o chonie idicle enfeme dan le cloe hich he ciicied fo focing on he miniae of local life.31

Some eamle of ealie hioie oliie inclde Nichola Geaie

He aee e e d Rae de Sa (1690), Samel on Pfendof man ediion of Idc 'e gae e e de 'e (1721-43),

Clade-Fanoi Lambe He gae, ce, aee, e e egee de

e ee d de (1750), Jean-Heni Mabe de Goe He e d

ece e dee a cde de e e c (1754), Loi-Valenin

Gmann eeal oliical hio book inclding He e d geee fa, Le ae ge de a ace fae (1777), Loi-Piee Aneil

Le de a Lge, He e de be de a Face (1779), and eeal

30 The Encyclopédie contains several entries tha menion hioie oliie in articles by Voltaire and Jaucourt, though histoire politique is not a headword. The term hioie hiloohie alo doe no egie a a headod, hoee Dideo and dAlembe boh emlo he em in he Dico liminaie and several articles. 31 See he en fo Hioie, ien b Volaie. (Dideo and dAlembe, Encyclopédie 8:223). 192 oliical hio ok b Jean-Baie Maill fom 1772 o 1780, inclding LE de cade, He e e ae de gee eee a e ce ce e aa (1780).32

A each of he online Uniei of Chicago ARTFL Fane co find no occence of hioie hiloohie in he ile of an ok io o he HDI.33 A

each of he caalog of he Bibliohe naionale de Fance (BNF) ho onl o mino ok ih ha em in he ile io o 1770. Afe 1780, hee ae 47 ok

ecoded in he BNF caalog in he folloing cen ha ae hioie hiloohie.

We can mie fom hi ha Ranal ok had an imac on ho ohe hogh abo

he ojec of iing hio.

Ranal eigheenh-cen conemoaie alo eeed migiing abo ch a caacio ile. One ciic, Fanoi Benad, ook ie ih ha he a a an oel- boad claim fo he HDI and blihed hi Aae of i in 1775. Ciiciing he mlile goal annonced in he ile of he ok, Benad dimie he book caaci o ea eihe hio o oliical econom, baed on hi ineeaion of he oliical aec of

he e. Thi eceied eakne naoed don he e imo of he book, in

Benad ie, o be hiloohical in nae. Chaaceiing hi ciie, Slana

Tomaelli ie, Benad hogh ha ha hio and oliical anali he ok

oided a lile moe han emliage fo ha he jdged o be Ranal and hi

32 The Bibliothèque Nationale de France catalogues these works among more than 400 published between 1600 and 1800 with titles referring to histoire politique. 33 The ARTFL Frantext corpus consists of over 3,500 French language texts written between the 12th and 20th centuries. https://artfl- project.uchicago.edu/content/artfl-frantext. 193 collaboao e inee, namel, hilooh.34 Benad ineeed hei hilooh

o eole aond nae, feedom, and moali ih he naed objec of ndemining

Chiiani and omoing eclaim.

While Benad ma hae been oel dimiie of Abb Ranal abili o

eole he dicod of conflicing oce o oide a clea-eed oliical hio, hi ciicim eeal he eceied engh of he hiloohical aec of he HDI. Benad

ee a combaie, if no dangeo, eaie elemen embedded ihin he dicoe of hioical een and imo/eo accon. Benad ineeaion of hilooh ma hae been diffeen han ha of he aho of he HDI, and i i ceainl a

olalen em in he Fench eigheenh cen. Fo he oe of hi d I e he

em hilooh and hiloohical o indicae a dicie and naaie oiion diffeen han ha hich foce on he oliical hio of colonie and ade oo. In

hi e, he hiloohical ae hoe aage ha a jdgmen and ineogae he

idom of acion. The hiloohical oice o mode ofen ake a e back

heoicall o a in eie he acion and agen of he eceding aage o ge he

eade engagemen ih he ocial and ehical imlicaion of ha iaion. The enhanced engagemen ih he eade ho b he dieion ino aoohe o dialoge and b a geae deni of figaie langage.

The value of commerce, from the philosophical point of view Thee ha nee been anhing a imoan o he enie hman ace a hi

34 Slana Tomaelli, On labelling Ranal Hioie: Reflecion on i Gene and Sbjec, in Raya Histoire des deux Indes: Colonialism, Networks, and Global Exchange, ed. Cecil Courtney and Jenny Mander (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2015), 74. 194 eanion in commece and global ael oe, o o claim he oening aage of he

He de de Ide, defining he coe and imoance of i oic.

Il n a oin e dnemen ai inean o lece hmaine en gnal, & o le ele de lEoe en aiclie, e la dcoee d Noea - monde & le aage a Inde a le ca de Bonne - Eance. Alo a commenc ne olion dan le commece, dan la iance de naion, dan le m, lindie & le goenemen de o le ele. Ce ce momen e le homme de cone le l loigne e on aoch a de noea ao & de noea beoin. Le odcion de clima lac o lae, e conommen dan le clima oiin d ole; lindie d Nod e anoe a Sd; le offe de lOien on deene le le de Occidena; & a-o le homme on fai n change mel de le oinion, de le loi, de le age, de le maladie, de le emde, de le e & de le ice.35

The e a off ih hebole (ne oin, ece hmaine, ne olion), and

he moemen of good on a global cale fom eao o ole and fom he Ea o he conie of he We. The combined effec of he hebole and he oaed global moemen ceae a ene of gea imoance fo he conen of he He de de

Ide. The 1770 eion deciion of dian eole elaionhi baed in commece change fom e on deen nceaie o become in 1774 e on aoch, changing he em fom an economic elaionhi (nceaie) o a aial / elaional one (aoch), eflecing he ajeco of he ok fom an economic hio o a

anfomaie hiloohical hio. Thi aage gge ha hee i a balance of good and bad enained b hi eolion in inechange: he emde e he

maladie, and he e again he ice.

35 HDI, 1:12. 195 We ma a ha he He de de Ide engage he eade in he hoe of

ading ocieal maladie fo hiloohical emedie, ading oliical ice fo emic

ie. We hall ee he acion of he e aeming o effecae an eiemic change

hogh a combinaion of o heoical aegie, one of hich aim o een h

hogh infomaion, hile he ohe aim o een h hogh ien eloence.

Tha i o a ha hi book geneae an ineeie iniaion fo he eade hogh he combined acion of o diffeen heoical mode oeaing ogehe b belonging o conflicing h egime. The ineeie eone o he e ma engende a change in manne of hinking, embacing he enccloedi beie agenda o change he common a of hinking, change la faon commne de ene.36 I i hi oocaie

oe ha lead Han Wole o efe o he HDI a Ranal machine de gee, an eeion ofen emloed b chola ince hen in dicing he oefl diie effec of hi e on Fench and Eoean hogh on colonial oe and lae.37 An eaminaion of he lee of hi machine in acion ill demonae he heoical

aegie e ih o anale.

To illae hee aegie in acion, le eamine an eamle of he cliomeic

aeg of eening h hogh daa and infomaion. The folloing aage fom

Book 13 gie an accon of commecial acii in Gadeloe.

A emie Janie 1777, la Gadeloe, en comenan le ile l o moin feile omie on goenemen, comoi doe mille e cen blanc de o ge & de o ee, eie cen cinane noi o

36 A Dideo ie in hi aicle Encclodie, hi cogniie aleaion i an essential chaace of hei Enccloedia: [] ce caacee e de change la faon commne de ene. (Dideo and dAlembe, Encyclopédie 5:642). 37 Hans Wolpe, Raa e a ace de gee: e de de Ide e e perfectionnements (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957). 196 mle libe, & cen mille eclae, oie le dnombemen ne mon aeing ae mille cen. Se oea comenoien nef mille de cen ing chea o mle, ine mille e cen aane be cone, & ing-cin mille ae cen moon, oc o che. Elle aoi o e cle ae cen aane-nef mille i cen ing-de ied de cacao; one million nef cen oiane-aoe mille aane-i ied de coon; di-hi million e cen ae-ing di-nef mille i cen ae-ing ied de caf; oi cen ae-ing- hi ceie i occoien ing-i mille ae-ing-hi a de ee.38

We ead in hi aage he nmeical aemen of he foce of odcion

(inclding lae labo), he nmbe of fam animal, and eo co ih aociaed

ga efineie. The e een he e of daa in oe ahe han in abla foma, giing a ene of hieachical imoance b he ode in hich he ae menioned. J a hie coloni ae menioned fi, folloed b fee black and hen b he nmbe of enlaed black eole, he animal and co alo ae gien in ode of commecial imoance. Een hogh he aniie gien ae e lage, he ae elled o ahe

han gien in nmeal, hich ha a omeha oeie effec. The eade i obliged o

end he ime and menal effo o decode he nmbe in ode o make an comaion o eflec on he imoance of he aniie inoled.

The e of hi aage doe no eem o be a o mch a i i a

anificaion and aegic ealaion. The ecion begin ih a ecific dae, Jana

1777, hich old be he ecen a fo he 1780 ediion and cold no hae figed in

he 1770 o 1774 ediion. Thi aage adance he accon of Fench colonial effo

38 HDI, 3:4045. 197 fom he eio chae on he eal hio o foc on eacing deail of e ecen hio.

The deailed foc on mndane acconing mae and ecen een beak he mold of ha hio iing a oed o be in hi ea. The 1762 Dcae of

he Acadmie fanaie of 1762 ae ha Hio i he Naaion de acion & de choe digne de mmoie.39 Poe hio hen i eiced o he eelling of hoe een ha ae dignified and oh of being memoialied. One can imagine ha he

hi manifeo of eo good fo a aicla egion old no mee he cieia o be eleaed fo conideaion a hio. In he gand Eccde, Volaie ie he en fo Hio , hich he define inciall in ooiion o Fable, le ci de fai donn

o ai; a conaie de la fable, i e le ci de fai donn o fa.40

Volaie enccloedia aicle conine on o offe boad ciicim of he acice of hio iing ha a fom inconoeible fac oed b maeial eidence and

ening ino he ealm of oinion bael diinc fom fable. A ch, e migh ead he

Gadeloe daa-ich e in he HDI a a eone o hi ciie of conemoa hioiogah. Thi agmen i oed b anohe aage of he HDI in he chae on Gadeloe elaining he aoach aken fo a lage majoi of he e. Tha aoach amon o aoiding he icke of eloence in fao of a h baed in nmbe and moe aoiae o he Sce de e han he eloen image of hio he a i had been ien in he a.

Si ces supputations fréquentes fatiguent un lecteur oisif, on espère quelles ennuieront moins des calculateurs politiques qui, trouvant dans la

39 Dcae de Acade faae 4h ed. (Bne, 1762), .. hioie. 40 Encyclopédie, .. hioie (8:220-21) 198 population & la production des terres la juste mesure des forces dun état, en sauront mieux comparer les ressources naturelles des différentes nations. Ce nest que par un registre bien ordonné de cette espèce quon peut juger avec quelque exactitude de létat actuel des puissances maritimes & commerçantes qui ont des établissemens dans le Nouveau- Monde. Ici, lexactitude fait le mérite de louvrage ; & lon doit peut- être tenir compte à lauteur des agrémens qui lui manquent, en faveur de lutilité qui les remplace. Assez de tableaux éloquens, assez de peintures ingénieuses amusent & trompent la multitude sur les pays éloignés. Il est tems dapprécier la vérité, le resultat de leur histoire, & de savoir moins ce quils ont été que ce quils sont : car lhistoire du passé, sur-tout par la manière dont elle a été écrite, nappartient guère plus au siècle où nous vivons que celle de lavenir.41 (emphasis mine)

The He de de Ide e acknoledge ha he feen efeence o nmbe, eimae, and aiic ill be faiging o he eade, b i make a cae fo

he ale a commied eade can da fom i. Hee ili m eloence in a ne age hee hio i an aid o aeciae he h of ho hing ae inead of ho he

ee. In he la enence, he e elegae hio of he a, a lea in he manne in

hich i a ien, o he ealm of eclaie ficion akin o he hio of he fe.

The hae a icle o no ion einfoce an aaene of he cen cen a an ea of oge, echoing imila eeion efeing o ce Sicle de lmie, a

em commonl emloed b ie of he eiod o efe o he eigheenh-cen ciical oimim ha in Englih i called he Enlighenmen.

To en o he eion of liic ihin he ok, e began hi ecion b eamining a aage hea ih infomaional oe mmaiing he commecial eo of Gadeloe in 1777. We hae eablihed ha hi e of iing eflec an inenional choice o beak ih he eio acice of hio iing o ceae a ne

41 HDI, 3:405 199 aoach, gonded in ili ahe han eloence. The ie aged ha ili

eliable, acionable infomaion a bee ied o he eigheenh-cen momen. I

old a ha if hi hif ee all ha he HDI had o offe, i old hae ended a a mino foonoe in he achie. Hoee, he He de de Ide emlo e anohe heoical aeg a he ame ime embacing he e eloence decied in

he aage aboe.

Wihin Book 13 hee i anohe aage ha alo addee ho hio i ien and he ale of good eaced fom colonial oeion.

LHISTOIRE ne no eneien e de conan i e on occ, a mi d ang & d bonhe de le je, ende le dominaion: mai elle ne no eene leemle dacn oeain i e oi ai de la eeinde. Ln, ceendan naoi-il a ai age e lae a fnee; & nen eoi-il a de lende de emie aini e de la olaion? Un gand emie & ne gande olaion een e de gand ma. Pe dhomme, mai hee; e deace, mai bien goen. Le o de ei a e de ende, celi de gand de e dmembe. Laccoiemen de iance e la la de goenemen de lEoe e on omi de le oeion dan le Noea Monde, mocce dei o long-em, o e je ne me oi a demand oen moi-mme, o e je naie a demand elefoi de homme l clai e moi, ce on deoi ene dabliemen fom i gand fai & aec an de aa dan n ae hmihe. Noe iable bonhe eige--il la joiance de choe e no allon cheche i loin? Somme-no dein conee enellemen de go ai facice? Lhomme e-il n o ee coninellemen ene le ciel & le ea? E-il n oiea de aage, o eemble--il a ae anima, don la l gande ecion e -limie? Ce on eie de dene e-il comene aec aanage la ee de cioen i loignen de le aie o e di, o a le maladie i le aaen dan la aee, o a le clima le aie?42

42 HDI, 3:331-2. 200

Thi aage i fom he ame e a he eio aage analed, hich lied

he odcion of Gadeloe fo eo. The eio aage ih i d liing of nmbe aiclaed a clea mehodological jificaion, adiing he eade o ale an effo o ead infomaional oe dedicaed o ili and denoncing eloence a he onamenaion of neliable hio, o of obcing h ielf (omen la mlide).

In hi cen eamle, hoee, he e engage he eade ih figaie langage and naaie elemen ha i o a, ih eloence.

Thi aage alo dice he ale of eo good fom colonial oeion, a did he eio aage on Gadeloe. Hoee, hee he e foce on he ocial and oliical ale of hoe good, emloing eloence o eade he eade ha he ehical co of hee good i oo high. The Gadeloe aage feaed an imeonal deciion of he iland ih no elici naaie eence. In cona, hi aage

een a diffeen inebjecii hogh he e of fi-eon and econd-eon

onon in he naaion.

Thi aage ac in a eie of gee o da he eade ino a collecie e

ih he naao, hen o eeal he I of he naao and eablih hi cedenial

(eho). Thi aage limael aim o eade he eade hogh a o of dialoge

ha colonial and commecial eloiaion i again hman nae and i hamfl o indiidal and naion. The fi aagah in he Hioie aage inie he eade

o join he naao in conideing ooiion abo hio hogh he e of he collecie e, ha i o a hogh econd-eon onon, ne no eneien e de, and ne no ene. The econd aagah in hi ece fhe deelo he

201 chaace of hi naao bjec b inodcing fi-eon onon, mocce dei

o long-em, je ne me oi a demand, and moi-mme. Afe hi, he la fe enence hif back o dialogic fom ih he naao oing eion o a e ha inclde he eade and naao joinl. In he econd a of he ece hi inclion i

ignaled b aiaion of he Fench econd-eon onon no, ih eamle like

e no allon cheche, and omme-no dein, along ih he elaed

oeie adjecie in noe bonhe. Whee he Gadeloe aage ha onl declaaie aemen and no eion, hi aage engage he eade in dialoge

hogh he e of eion (hee ae i eion o of eleen enence in hi

aage, acconing fo oghl half of he conen).

Thi aage alo emlo mlile heoical fige o achiee a geae degee of eloence han in he Gadeloe eo liing aage. A cloe eading of hi

aage eeal he e of hebole (elaie ch a acn oeain, ec.), an allieaion of he llable e, eeaed fo ime (een, e dhomme, e deace, ei), and chiam o be he agmen ha i i a gae eo fo

le o oeeend hei dominion (gand emie, gande olaion coing in

eee ih e dhomme [] e deace) . I i ai fnee fo he oeeign

ho acifice hei bjec lie and haine in he aem o eend hei le a i

old be ie (age) fo he one ho daed o eain hei ambiion. Uing he comaaie a mch a (ai e) bl imlie ha he ae ooie, and in eal meae. One ambiion i no lighl bee han he ohe he ae diameicall ooed, if e acce he logic of he e. Alead e can ee ha hogh

he e of aealing heoical ce in he e, he aho aem o eade he

202 eade of hi oin of ie b eling on eloence and figaion a mch a, if no moe han, elici logical agmenaion.

Taking a cloe look a hee heoical fige eeal hei e o ceae a kind of naaliaion of he agmen hogh eaie langage. The oe of heoical langage i ha i ceae eaion hogh he ce of he od in hemele. A

eeiion, allieaion o hme ma lend a ene of coecne o he idea hoe od

eeen. Reade migh a o hemele, if i i beaifl, i m be e. In ode o

mmaie he agmen of he fi aagah, he e emlo anahoa o indicae a logical imilai ia he aallelim of o hae; Pe dhomme, mai hee; e deace, mai bien goen. Thi enence ehibi eeal moe lae of comlei

hogh he heoical fige of ellii (omiing eb fom he enence comleel) and he anihei beeen he limiaion imlied b e and he oiie ocome

ignaled b mai conebalancing he limiaion. Baed on hi anali of he aage in eion, e m acknoledge a geae deni of ineeie oeaion eied of

he eade o nack and deie he meaning() of hee hae han fo he lieal, infomaional oe of he aiic-laden Gadeloe aage. Thi heoicall iche

e on age 33132 eie moe ineeie engagemen fom he eade and offe he

leae of eeiencing langage a eloence, ahe han meel a a caie of infomaional conen. Thogho he HDI e find a mi of hee o o of langage

eaing he ame bjec; one infomaion-foced, he ohe engagemen-foced.43

43 For example, compare the last paragraphs of 1:63 with 1:64 regarding the Hindu religion, and the first and last paragraphs on 1:469 on the financial administration of Fance, o Bail hical geogah on 2:359 e he moal geogah of colonizing Brazil on 2:358. 203 The HDI i a oefl amalgamaion of hee o e of e. Thoe aiic- laden aage ae mean no onl o cone infomaion, b a a a o ie hio inended o be bee ied o he icle o no ion, a Ranal oe. Thi hio

iing mehod a mean o banih he eloen and icee langage ed b

eio aadigm of hioiogah in ode o bee ende he h. A he

eio aage fom age 3:405 of he Gadeloe chae in he HDI oined o,

eloence can be abed o eneain and milead he eade, Assez de tableaux

éloquens, assez de peintures ingénieuses amusent & trompent la multitude sur les pays

éloignés. Thi ice again figaie eloence in hio iing i einfoced b

Volaie in hi aicle on loence hee he ane ciic ho ak if hioian ae

emied o emlo eloence. Volaie ie ha he e of eloence ha i fiing fo hioian hold be foced on clea eenaion of een; On demande i lloence e emie a hioien ; celle i le e oe conie dan la de

ae le enemen, dan le eoiion ojo nee & legane.44 Ye deie

hee aide difaoing he e of eloen figaie langage in hio iing,

Ranal commiioned eloen aage fom Dideo and acknoledged he need fo

hoe aage o conebalance he boedom indced b he iliaian daa oion.

Dideo eo a coneaion ih Ranal hoing boh of he collaboao concen fo hi balance. Hee Dideo i eioning Ranal abo he oenial negaie effec of

hee moe eloen ecion, hile Ranal ini on hei necei.

ne craignez-vous pas que tous ces écarts, quelque éloquents que vous les supposiez, ne gâtent un peu votre ouvrage? - Non, non, me répondit-il; faie ojo ce e je o demande. [] je connai n e mie e

44 Encyclopédie, .. loence (5:530) 204 vous le goût du public; ce sont vos lignes qui sauveront lennui de mes calculs éternels.45

Th, in he HDI e hae a e comoed of o dicie elemen, b inenionall o. One elemen of he e dienchan, aing he fondaion of non- emiical knoledge a eceied idea ha canno be confimed, o decing

ejdgmen ha hae no been bjec o eio eaminaion. The ohe elemen e- enchan he como laid bae b emiical maeialim. Hioical knoledge ha i no emiicall gonded i challenged b accon ha can claim objecie eificaion and

hich offe he ili of ha infomaion. If hi dienchanmen ee he onl giding

incile of he HDI, hoee, he e old deie a eade of he ceain of an a

d on hich he o he eiol elied o make ene of he old, leaing a oid.46

In hi cae of dienchanmen onl, he HDI old ei a a e decibing he hio of colon and commece ih li of good and eence of milia and ade acion, all lacking a fameok of moal and ehical ale o gie meaning o he gee.

Hoee, a I age i ealen in eigheenh-cen Fench iing, dienchanmen i ccefll aied ih a e-enchaning heoical elemen. Thi e- enchanmen doe no meel coni of elacing one dienchaned iem of infomaion

ih a diffeen one. Inead, e-enchanmen ok a kind of hmaniic, ecla magic on he eade. Thogh he efomaie oe of figaie langage, he e-enchaning

45 Dideo in hi blic lee coneing Melchio Gimm ciicim of he HDI. Lee aologie de labb Ranal Monie Gimm, Mach 25, 1781. 46 As the concepts of disenchantment and re-enchantment are discussed at length in chapters one and two of this dissertation, I will simply refer the reader at this point to Joshua Landy and Michael T Saler, The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). 205 e eie he eade o ndeake a moe comle ineeaion of meaning ia figal

hinking han eied fo moe oaic e, and h doe moe, cogniiel, han mee

od on ae can accomlih. The e-enchaning e ane ih he dienchaning

e o gee oad comle meaning ha ae beond he incomlee caaci of lieal langage a emioic ignifie. I ceae and ce in he mind

eeenaional em ha canno be aid.

The dicod in ce i one of he oefl elemen inodced ino he e oe he coe of he eiion fom 1770 o 1780, aiclal ih he addiion of

aage ien b Dideo. A an eamle, ih he aid of daa ialiaion, e can

ee ho an addiion o he 1780 ediion ine he hhm of aagah in he beginning of Book 1.

Fige 3.1: Daa ialiaion of he Inodcion o he He de de Ide hoing eal eiion oe he hee main ediion fom 1770, 1774, and 1780.47

47 Data and image from Visualising Raynal project, ed. Glenn Roe, http://cdhr- projects.anu.edu.au/raynal/, accessed 16 August 2019. Supported in part by the Consortium for the Study of the Premodern World at the University of Minnesota. 206 The inodcion coni of 43 aagah, he fi 60 ecen of hich follo a fail conien hhm of lengh aeaging abo 120 od, ih ligh inceae o deceae beeen aagah of medim lengh. The olie in hi e i he foh

aagah, he onl ne aagah added o he inodcion in he 1780 ediion

(indicaed in dake colo on he gah). Thi aagah i noiceabl longe han aeage

(414 od) and ine he hhm of hi ecion abl. While e no hae eidence ha hi aagah a ien b Dideo, he HDI a, a e hae aed,

blihed a he ok of a ingle aho. A a ok oing a ingle aho, he foh

aagah of hi ediion ie he inee of a eade de o i neen lengh in cone and i ab change in one and naaie mode. Comae hee o eamle.

Ece C Thid Paagah

LEurope a fondé par-tout des colonies; mais connoît-elle les principes sur lesquels on doit les fonder? Elle a un commerce déchange, déconomie, dindustrie. Ce commerce passe dun peuple à lautre. Ne peut-on découvrir par quels moyens & dans quelles circonstances? Depuis quon connoît lAmérique & la route du cap, des nations qui nétoient rien sont devenues puissantes; dautres qui faisoient trembler lEurope, se sont affoiblies. Comment ces découvertes ont-elles influé sur létat de ces peuples?

Ece D Foh Paagah

Telle e la che effaane e je me i oo de emli. J ai conac ma ie. Jai aell mon eco le homme ini de oe le naion. Jai ineog le ian & le mo: le ian, don la oi e fai enende me c; le mo, i no on anmi le oinion & le connoiance, en ele lange il aien ci. Jai e le aoi; jai oo le moignage; jai claici le fai.48

48 HDI, 1:23. 207 Thi foh aagah een a dden hif in one and le, heighening he claim of imoance fo he HDI and geneaing dionance beeen an emiical dicoe of hio and an affecie dicoe ihin hi ok. Fo he eceding hee

aagah, he gammaical bjec of he enence feae boadl encomaing non and onon like he imeonal il (Il n a oin e), o (To e chang), and em ch a le homme, lhomme, and LEoe.49 The lof and

nieal one a he oe abl hif ih he foh aagah hee he iing

le change o inodce a eonalied naaie oice, emloing he bjec onon

je ahe han he aie oice and boad caego non o onon ed o hi

oin and hen again hogho he e of he inodcion. In fac, m anali of he

e eeal ha hi aagah i he e of he 43 aagah of he Inodcion o

e he fi-eon onon je. Thi liic and cal ineion ceae a dali ihin a e oing o hae onl one aho. The combinaion of nieal and eonal oice i agabl one of he majo eaon fo he engagemen ih eade

ha led o he immene olai of he HDI.50

The Inodcion o he HDI i all ineeed o foc aenion on he

aemen of commece a a ogeie, oiie eone o he oblem of hmani. I

ill age, hoee, ha hile commece i eened in he e a an ane o one

aicla e of oblem, he ke o ndeanding he He de de Ide i he

49 HDI, 1:12. 50 Jacques Chouillet claims the HDI was one of the three most widely published Fench ok in he lae eigheenh cen, Poface: Ranal face lhoion daene de Lmie, in Lece de Raa: He de de Ide e Ee e e Amérique au XVIIIe siècle, ed. Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Manfred Tietz, SVEC 286 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1991), 373. See also Darnton, Forbidden Best-Sellers, 63. 208 oe of a hiloohical oiion o ce he ill of oliical eil.

The Inodcion ceae he condiion fo a eade o engage in a dialoge ih

he e b oing eion ha eie ome eflecion o ane. The fi aagah of he Inodcion, a een aboe, lead ih nieal genealiie and a long eie of

heoical eion abo he effec of global ade on dail life and he fe fo hmani. Afe geneaing a long eie of eion iho eloing he ane, he

e ddenl change egie in he foh aagah o adde he eade diecl.

Thi foh aagah elici a eea mode of eceion hogh a leical field of fea and deah. Wod ch a effaae, cac (in hich e alo eceie

ac), ec, e a & e lend he aage gaia and emoional

eonance eniel a odd ih he inellecal, hioical one of he eceding

aagah. Thi amalgamaion of dicoe ceae a dionance o be eoled hich heighen engagemen ih he e. We cae eolion and aend o deail hich aea o di i in ode o oce a eolion. Michle Dche age ha hee diffeen naaie aegie ee a eaie, aciaing effec on he eade. She

ae, Lhioien-moalie, don le emie deoi e de die la i, cde la lace lhioien-hiloohe, don la foncion e o ae. Un el dico coe le on ni de la naaion [] ce ie de aole feon de lacion le lie dn confli, o lae,

moin, accae e jge, aellea le lece ende ai.51 I old ake hi oin fhe o e ha i i no meel he inance of he e oice ha inie he

eade o acion, b ahe he hiloohical e, cing aco he fac-foced

51 Michèle Duchet, Diderot e He de de Ide écriture fragmentaire (Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1978), 164. 209 naaie eam ha amlifie he conflic beeen he o oice and caale a moe

oen eone han if he e ee comoed niel of he hiloohical naaie

oice. A eade m emlo mlile ineeie fameok o encoma he dali in he e, hich i moe aciaing and lead he eade o conide a bjec fom mlile oin of ie.

In ece D, he naao i acie and oeae fom a oiion of ahoi. I i

he naao oiion o ooe, o conecae, o call ohe o aid, o ineogae, o

eigh, o ooe, and o claif he fac.52 The eneg and hooghne of he naao acion eae a o he cedibili of hi jdgmen.53 Cedibili i a ciical comonen fo dienchanmen o be effecie, fo one m he ahoi ha dilace eio belief o knoledge.

In hi aagah, he naao eoke a ciical ance, aing ha hi ak a o

eion he oinion and knoledge of ahoiie, boh conemoa and hoe of he

a ia hei iing. The naao acknoledge ha hee accon old no ala accod ih each ohe and o he ndeook he ak of ifing o he h, jai e le aoi; jai oo le moignage.54 The e ceae a ace fo h ha i ineolaed beeen oce, i acal oiion ling omehee no comleel co- inciden ih an one ingle oce of knoledge. Th i o be ceaed in he ac of ciical ineeaion.

52 While this address to the reader might be considered a form of captatio benevolentiae, I old age ha he h of he naao aeion i o bole hi authority (ethos) more than to appeal to the gentle goodwill of the reader. 53 Masculine gender is indicated for the narrator by the French adjective agreements in the text. 54 HDI, 1:3. 210 The naao conine b enjoining he eade o el on he h of hi e, O

i aine! ce oi ele e jai eece. The e objecii i alo gaaneed b he naao claim o aoid he imeion of ejdice of oigin, ofeion, o

eligion. He ihe fo all eade o beliee him o be le concioen & le ami. B

hi gee of neali, he e indicae he nieali of he naao deciion, adice, and ononcemen. Thi neali i eleaed o an ehical ance concening

he d (le emie oin, le emie deoi) of one ho ea mae imoan o hmankind haine.

Once he naaie oice ha ceaed an aeal o emoion (aho) and eablihed cedibili (eho), he e bl hif bjec onon o inclde he eade

ih he onon on and conje a iion of hiloohical deachmen ha he eade ma join in.

Ele a-de de oe le conidaion hmaine, ce alo on lane a-de de lamohe, & on oi le globe a-deo de oi. Ce de-l on laie ombe de lame le gnie ec, le alen obli, la e malheee. Ce de-l on ee limcaion & lignominie ce i omen le homme, & ce i le oimen.55

The e eeen he naao (and eade) iing o a eecie aboe he globe, fom hence come jdgmen and ea fom he nieal on. The naao no

ojec eade along ih him hee he join him in ineing and eacing o injice, and he ead of he j. Thi oion of he e bild he effec of iing

55 HDI, 1:3. 211 heigh ih a eie of anahoa, imiaing a eeaed climbing moion. The eeion

ce de l o ce l i eeaed fie ime, clminaing ih ce de l enfin

e Hoee, once he eade ha a ae of hi eleaed hiloohical anage oin,

he naao ihda he haed eeience and once again en o naaie fi

eon. Ce-l e jai iablemen mcie: je i libe, & me eni a niea de mon je.56 The naaie oice elain ha hi eecie i necea o

eceie a aen of cience and a (ciiliaion) dilacing dakne and babaim,

Cest-là enfin que, voyant à mes pieds ces belles contrées où fleurissent les sciences & les arts, & que les ténèbres de la barbarie avoient si long-em occe.57 If we follow

he heoical cecendo of hi aage, e find ha hi oin, maked b cest là enfin, i he high oin of he aage, boh in em of figaie image and importance. This elevated and detached position above human affairs gives the narrator the right point of viewing and the right mindset from which one can not only perceive the balance of human justice, but also see the ultimate hope of Enlightenment. Only once the narrator has achieved this elevated and philosophical position can he see humanity transcending distinctions of geography (contrées) and witness arts and sciences routing barbarism and darkness. The backward, superstitious, irrational shadows of human behavior (ténèbres) give way here, to be replaced by the voice of enlightened people

(éclairés), which is a trope typical of the writing of the siècle des Lumières. The concluding weight of the last line of this paragraph, ce le commece, ce le commece has drawn much attention to commerce, but the apogee of this passage occurs

56 HDI, 1:24. 57 HDI, 1:24. 212 earlier, where the philosophical position can encompass a view of Enlightenment flourishing. From this elevated point of view then many paths of inquiry may be pursued. I agree that one such question involves commerces civilizing potential, but I would argue that the true impact of the Histoire philosophique et politique derives from this texts capacity to transform a readers concepts and to change the way of viewing the interconnected Old and New World.

The ambivalence of commerce Even if it is not the ultimate aim of the HDI to provide an unambiguous paean to the benefits of international commerce, the eaminaion of commerce is nonetheless an important feature throughout the entire text. The question of economic gain is a lens through which to view an unconsciously central aspect of European global society.

je me suis demandé: qui est-ce qui a creusé ces canaux? qui est-ce qui a desséché ces plaines? qui est-ce qui a fondé ces villes? qui est-ce qui a rassemblé, vêtu, civilisé ces peuples? & qualors toutes les voix des hommes éclairés qui sont parmi elles mont répondu: cest le commerce, cest le commerce.58

Fom he iileged anage oin, he naao (no a je again) ak ho dg he canal, dained he eland, fonded ciie, aembled, clohed, and ciilied hee

eole? e alo oe le oi de homme clai i on ami elle mon

ond: ce le commece, ce le commece.59 Thee i a cecendo of eion, and dececendo in he eeiion of eone, hich gie ce le commece, ce le commece he eigh of a final, cloed ane o he eion.

58 HDI, 1:3. 59 HDI, 1:3. 213 I i clea ha commece i indeed a cenal heme of he HDI, a indicaed in he

ile. The Fench od cece oee a efl ambigi in i doble meaning of

economic ade, and ocial ineacion, boh of hich ene ae a la o aing degee hogho he HDI. A in he aage aboe, commece all ha a oiie,

ogeie alence in he ok a a ool o inceae ealh, b alo a a ciiliing foce, geneaing ojec o imoe he hman condiion and ceaing he condiion o ead

Enlighenmen. Hoee, hi ie of commece i no ala he eecie eened in he HDI. To gie b one eamle, comae ha aie of commece o hi caion abo i in book IV, chae 32. Ce eon de miable in de commece, i meon de noea le ame la main de Fanoi & de Angloi.60 A he naao indicae in he inodcion, he eade i o eigh and eion he accon o aie a an ndeanding. The e of he HDI i comlicaing he ndeanding of commece b

eening i in a dialecical fahion beeen commece a a ciiliing foce and commece a he eeion of iolen naional elf-inee. Commece conain hi

enion ihin ielf and boh ale ae ineogaed in he age of he He de de

Ide. The eolion of hi enion eie o aend o he ineoeaion of diffeen mode in hich hio i eeened in he e.

Afe he iing fi-eon naaie aage, he e iche back o a hioical mode o decibe he Phoenician and hei commece. Nae, hee, gie he

Phoenician he gif of caci, focing hem o lean efl a and ade. In cona

o ha e a ih Sain-Piee iing on oidence in chae 2, nae doe no

60 HDI, 1:543. 214 oide all ha he eole need; e hi ac i oidenial fo i eache hem ho o eloi nae moe effeciel. Hee ce ele, de naoi ee ien e de la nae; iil ia de cee indigence mme le gnie & le aail, do nacien le a & le ichee.61

The emainde of he Inodcion conine fo anohe 39 aagah in he

oliical hio mode, laing o a lineage of naion iing and falling, fom he ancien

Phoenician o he beginning of he Pogee eanion in he fifeenh cen. Thi eoiion e he age fo book 1, hich begin he eie of nineeen book of he

HDI, each of hich chonicle and anale he colonial endeao of he majo

Eoean oe.

If e ae o age, a I hae done aboe, ha a e fncion o anfom a

eade, i behooe o eamine ho each of he mlile oice enconeed in he

HDI migh efom ha anfomaion diffeenl.

Eoio e, ch a e ee in Ece A in he beginning of hi chae doe no eie mch fom a eade. Dae, name of conie, and li of een ae all eail oceed ihin a eade eiing eiemological fameok. Daa i daed, ne oe of infomaion ae ockiled, and eoneo infomaion i elaced ih coecion. None of hi eie a cage in he eade, o mch ineeie engagemen. Hoee, he eade encone ih naaie ficion, aiclal ih diec dialoge o aoohe, oeae accoding o a diffeen mode and eie he

eade o conje no j hing and eole, b alo a elaional fame and o make

61 HDI, 1:4. 215 ome deciion on an emoional o enimenal leel. Joha Land m he oe of ficion in he mind of he eade h: fomaie ficion nee foce hemele on

. Wiho o acie aiciaion, he ill no do hei ok.62

Land conce of fomaie ficion hel ndeand ha Fanoi

Benad a a he dangeo and beie oe of he hilooh in he HDI. Land

e he conce of fomaie ficion o elain ho ficion engage a eade. He

ae, Rahe han oiding knoledge e e [] ha he gie i -;

ahe han anmiing belief, ha he ei ih ae ; ahe han eaching,

ha he do i a.63 Land hal ooe hi a of aoaching ficion o ha he call meage hning hich he ee a a edcioni ie of he oe of ficional fom and coeond bee o inenoing he fac conained ihin.

If e conide again he aage eceed a he beginning of hi chae in hi ligh, e can begin o align hem ih o kind of oice: one a fomaie ficion oice

ha diecl engage he eade, aining one o hink diffeenl abo he old; anohe

he oice of hioical infomaion, giing knoledge ahe han kno-ho.

Two Kinds of Truth Fom one eecie, i cold eem ha diffeen oice in a ok of ficion ae diffeen manne of elling he ame h. Hoee, he HDI eie he eade o naigae beeen diffeen d of h ia hee mlile oice. Some chola of he

HDI hae highlighed he ole of comeing h in he ok and acconed fo hem

62 Joshua Landy, How to Do Things with Fictions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 13. 63 Landy, Fictions, 10. 216 ih eeal diffeen elanaion. Anhon Sgnell caegoie hee o kind of

h along he ai ggeed b he HDI ile: oliical h o hiloohical h.

Face à la vérité de l arithmétique politique de Raynal, cest donc une autre vérité qui se fait jour, jusquà occuper une large place dans lHistoire des deux Indes: Limage auguste de la vérité ma toujours été présente. O vérité sainte! Cest toi seule que jai respectée, sécrie lorateur philosophique qui se présente dans les pages liminaires de louvrage.64

Fo hi a, Pee Jimack alo age ha hee ae o e of h in he ok.

Secificall, he gge ha hee h hae neal ale and ae conied in he diffeen dicoe of hio and hilooh: la dimenion hiloohie i caacie la eion dfiniie d lie naaa en go en 1780. E dan ne gande mee cee dimenion emble aoi geffe ne maie l confomie, moin coneaaie.65 In hi anali, Han Wole cona a liea eoicim o a hioical h een in he HDI age; LHe de de Ide ne a n

oman; mai Ranal ai fo bien coloie e coe n ee e il a, di an aan

Benadin de Sain-Piee, fai e le blic eoen a lende de oie.66

In hi jdgmen, he ceaie and figaie elemen of he HDI ae mee onamenaion

o aeal o he eading blic. Hoee, m eading gge ha o ead hee figaie elemen a mee onamenaion old be o miinee hei fncion. I i in fac he blending of emiical and figaie h ha ceae i iali o infom abo

oliical econom, hilooh, and hio, hich Sgnell, Jimack, and Wole hae

64 Anhon Sgnell, Inodcion gnale, in HDI 2010, 1:i. 65 Pee Jimack, Penaion d Lie I in HDI 2010, 1:19. 66 Hans Wolpe, Raa e a ace de gee: e de de Ide e e perfectionnements (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), 19. 217 idenified a eaae domain of h in he ok.

Lieae, ininicall a ok of ficion, ha a comlicaed elaionhi o h claim. Land emind of he haed aaene beeen aho and eade of he e

non-h ha define ficion and eaae i fom eo, lie, o declaaie dicoe.67 Paiclal in he cae of he noel, hee i a long hio of conenion abo he gene elaion o h. In he cone of eigheenh-cen Fance, hi can be een in he ooiion beeen le ai and le aiemblable.68 Conideing he

eaaion beeen h and ficion baed on e gene, ha ae e o make of a e

ha hif a ime fom hioical, declaaie dicoe ino figaie, affecie dicoe? The o mode of eeenaion ame diffeen bden on he a of

eade and aho/acone. Poblemaic hen i Damien Ticoie aeion ha, cona o he lafl liea aie of he Se a Vage de Bgae, e ae o ead Dideo deciion in he HDI hich el heail on figaie, liea langage a faihfl.69 Ho, hen, i he eade o deemine ha i e? Peha i i a mae of objecie and eecie ha can gide o an ndeanding of ha i

eceied a e b he eade/iee.

Illustrating the Philosophical Point of View Like he incial ok in he ohe chae of hi dieaion, he He de

67 See Joshua Landy, How to do Things with Fictions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3-4. 68 Chae II, Ficion, hio and h, i a efl efeence on hi debae in Vivienne Mylne, The Eighteenth-Century French Novel: Techniques of Illusion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 69 Damien Ticoie, Ranal and Dideo Paioic Hio of he To Indie, or The Problem of Anti-Colonialim in he Eigheenh Cen, The Eighteenth Century 59, no. 4 (2018): 433, https://doi.org/10.1353/ecy.2018.0027. 218 de Ide inclde illaion ceaed ih in o nde he diecion of he aho of he e. I a common acice a he ime fo he e o chooe illaion,

ahe han he aho. Since he illaion in he book in o d ee odced and inclded ih he aoal of he aho and he ee a of he ined book ha

eade enconeed, e ill eamine hem a an inegal a of he e. Conideing

he lae of he HDI ill hel ndeand an addiional dimenion of he oeaion of dienchanmen and e-enchanmen ha e hae been eamining in he e.

A aage hich demonae he aem a e-enchanmen of Eoean ocial

ce i fond in Tome 4 concening he innae hmani of Noh Ameican

aage. In he ale, a famil of indigeno Canadian oide life-aing aid o ome

hiecked Fench ailo. Thi aage accomanie he foniiece engaing of he

ome an engaing ha illae and iifie he e. Tical of he age of he

noble aage oe, he hinl-eidenced anecdoe een a hoheical naall- good hman being o and in cona o oedl ciilied Eoean ho ae

hon o lack, b deie, io ale and acion he naie demonae. The e begin ih a hid-eon naaion of a hieck folloed eenall b he oching

cene of comaionae od oken b an indigeno Canadian o he Fench ailo.

Ceendan n enimen inn de bieneillance, le [le Canadien] amne elefoi no. Un bimen Fanoi oi bi, lene de lhie, le oche dAnicoi. Ce de maelo i, dan cee ile dee & aage, aoien cha a ige de fima & de la famine, fomen, de dbi de le naie, n adea i, a inem, le condii dan le coninen. Une cabane de aage offi le egad eian. Me fe, le di affeceemen le chef de cee famille oliaie, le malhee on doi noe commiaion & noe aiance; no omme homme, & le mie de lhmani no ochen dan le ae comme dan no-mme. Ce eeion dne

219 ame ende, fen iie de o le eco i oien a ooi de ce gne aage.

Eoen, i fie de o goenemen, de o loi, de o iniion, de o monmen, de o ce e o aelle oe agee, emee e je o ae n momen. Je ien de o eoe aec imlici & an a le ablea de la ie & de m d aage. Je ne o ai ni diiml e ice, ni eag e e. La enaion e mon ci o a fai oe, je o demande de la conee j ce e le l bea gnie, lhomme le l loen dene o ai a e caon & o ai ein aec oe la foce, aec oe la magie de on coloi le bien & le ma de o cone i olice. Son ablea o anoea dadmiaion, je nen doe oin: mai coe-o il laie dan o ame lmoion dliciee e o eene encoe? Leime, lamo, la naion, e o ene daccode de aage, o liniea--il o o comaioe? Vo ne eie e de miable aage dan le fo; le denie de aage eoi n homme eecable dan o ci.70

The econd aagah dioien he eade b jming fom he od oken b

he naie Canadian o a dden diec adde o he Eoean eade. Wiho maked

aniion, hi aagah fi ead a a coninaion of he Canadian eaking. I i

hocking hen he naaie oice haange and mock Eoean ide in hei goenmen and idom. No nil he hid enence doe i become clea ha he naaie oice i no diecl addeing he eade, anoing he eade fom obeing he Canadian ablea o liening o he naao admonihing aoohe and being eminded of he eade locaion in Eoe.

Mioing he moemen in he image, he e da ino a fi cene of noble

naal comaion, hen ihda ino a econd cene eiing geae ineeaion.

Thi econd cene in he aage deache he eade fom one concee locaion in

70 HDI, 4:1819. 220 Canada o a eie of fa dilacemen oad monmen, an ai okho, ild foe, and ciilied ciie. One cold age ha hi mobile gae elicae he

hiloohe eleaion o oa aboe he globe, eeing eamle of ie and ice, ehoing fello hman being o elace babaim ih ligh, a een in he inodcion

o he HDI.

The ahoial oice conclde he aage b aking he Eoean eade o conee he delicio emoion eeienced hen conjing he Canadian cene.

Thi injncion o he eade e ha enimenal oiie (delicio emoion) o e- enchan he Old Wold fom he Ne. Tha i o a, o beak fied belief and

efomlae he conce of Eoean ciili, blending he io ideal of Eoe ih

he bondle feedom eeened b he fige of naie of a ild land, ee o he oiginal ae of hmankind in nae befoe he coion of he oli.

To comlee hi anali, e no eamine he lae ha coeond o hi

aage hee he aho a fi aea iml o ciie Eoean ocie ing he

aman oe of he noble aage. Angela Alei diill he eence of hi oe effeciel aing ha he noble aage i eeened a, an indiidal liing in a e

ae of naegenle, ie, ncoed b he ice of ciiliaion.71 Afe anali of he HDI aage in aallel ih he accomaning image, e ee ha he aho emlo illaion and e fo moe han mee ocial ciie. Image and e fncion

71 Angela Alei, Le Bon Saage: Dance ih Wole and he Romanic Tadiion, American Indian Culture and Research Journal 15, no. 4 (January 1, 1991): 91, https://doi.org/10.17953/aicr.15.4.t886wl0565622t72. For a thorough discussion of the concept of the noble savage, see Terry Jay Ellingson, The Myth of the Noble Savage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 221 ogehe hee o e-enchan and efame Old Wold ciili ia Ne Wold affecie eeience.

The foniiece engaing fo Tome 4 of he 1780 ediion feae a noble

aage famil of indigeno Canadian oiding cco o a go of anded Fench

ailo. The engaing a commiioned fo he 1780 ediion and a eeced b Jean

Baie Blaie Simone afe a daing b Jean-Michel Moea le jene.

222

Fige 3.2: Bienfaiance dne Famille aage d Canada ene de Fanoi. Engaed illaion foniice fo Tome 4 of he He e e e de abee e d cece de Ee da e de Ide, 1780.

In hi lae he iee ee a famil of naie Canadian nea he fon of ha aea

o be a oen all ce locaed nde he hade of a ee. The fahe of he famil i 223 he focal oin of he image in he middle gond. The chiaoco comoiion eablihe a hieach of ale eleaing he Canadian aiach, ho i in he ligh, aboe he Fench ailo ho ae mol hadoed. The e of ligh and dak highligh

he fahe in a beam of nligh fom aboe he ee and obce he midecion of he

Fench ailo in dak one. The fahe and a a fige in eilibim, ih leg foming a iangla mmeical oe. Wih hi lef hand he gee oad hi home and good in he foegond hile hi igh hand eche o, alm (indicaing

eacefl inen), in elcome oad he deeae ailo. The Fench ailo ae deed in Eoean aael and ae in a lican oiion boh in oe and becae he ae aoaching fom a ah belo he Canadian. In he backgond e ee moe ailo along he ah, and fhe aa nea he hoeline hee i a fain image of cde af.

The illaion ee he imoance of he Canadian head of he famil, lacing him cenall in he image and binging he ee back o him ih o ac eeing fom eihe o o boom o he igh a he middle of he fame. One ac i ceaed b he donad ee of he ee banche, and a econd ac i aced along he begging hand of he io of Fench ailo imloing o hanking he Canadian.

The image eoke he aaen enimen of he ablea and eablihe a

hiloohical oiion fom hich o jdge he acion oaed. The io of lican

ailo i ominen a lef. Thei face ae dan in gea deail hoing he emoion of begging o of gaide. The face of he Canadian ae ofe and mch le deailed,

hei facial eeion hade o decode. The ineacion of he io and he fahe conie he ne of he iing cene hich lead he iee ino a enimenal aeciaion of he deicion. A e conine o eamine he in, hoee, e noice a

224 econd e of ailo behind he io aiall eceding ino he backgond. Thi dianced ai een a e of inenal ecao, inaniaing a ciical diance fom

hich he cene i alo ieed. The do ae in dialoge ih each ohe, obeing he cenal cene nfold. Thei look ae concened, aeciaie, and mildl ied. I

gge ha hi do eeen he deached hiloohical diance ha he HDI i

aining he eade o ecognie and eeience. We fi a hi hiloohical

eecie in he HDI inodcion ih he naaie oin of ie eleaed o e

he oge bogh b commece. The eleaed oin of ieing in he e doe no foake enimenali b ancend he aicla o eigh he nieal boh emaheicall and aionall.

I old aea hen ha he image e hae analed can be ndeood a a

ial aallel o he a mlile oice fncion in he e. Afe he fi imeion of he enimenal ignee in he foegond, he iee eceie he hiloohical

ance of he ai in he middle diance, oiding a ial model of deached eflecion.

The image illae a hiloohical eone ha encomae enimenali b no a

he co of eaon.

While ome ciical aoache o he HDI old foc on acing he diffeence beeen he o aagah in he Canadian accon o diffeence in oce ahohi, finding eidence fo Dideo hand in he econd aagah, i doe no mae hee. In

hi inance he eade ha a combined affecie and hiloohical eeience hogh

he acii of eading image, anecdoe, and aoohe. The el i a efaming of

ocial comolog, beaking one conceion of Eoean ciili hogh he eeal of

ild and ciilied a he loc of ie. The eolion of he aage age fo a

225 beemen of Eoean ocieie b e-imagining he old a eca b nel

(e)dicoeed naal ie. The eaie oe of he aage i geae hogh i combinaion of affecie and aional/hiloohical dicoe han old be achieed b eihe one iho he ohe.

La giffe d li: Dides contributions A e hae eablihed, conideing he ok a a hole gie inigh ino a

negiic oe ha old be miing if he e ee fagmened ino eaae anale of Ranal od and Dideo od. In hi d I hae choen o e aide

he eion of conibo and oce fo he HDI, hich hae been and conine o be died b man ohe.72 O inee hee i no o mch in deemining hich

ie conibed hich ecific aage, a i i in deemining he oeall comlei and aegie inheen in he comiled e.

I old aea hen ha effo o idenif Dideo conibion old be aniheical o hi aoach. Hoee, ch an ineno can hel eablih aage in he hiloohical oice (aoohe, affecie, conealiing) ha ee enned b Dideo, and h beak don he noion ha he hiloohical oice i olel een de o he ineion of Dideo od. If hee ae ohe occence of hi oice,

ien b Ranal and ohe, hen he hiloohical oice i a feae of he ec and no meel he idioncaie of one co-aho. We ae h fonae ha Dideo

72 I would mention again the pioneering work of Hans Wolpe as well as scholarship by Michèle Duchet, Diderot et l"Histoire des deux Indes" ou lÉcriture fragmentaire (Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1978); Anhon Sgnell ne ciical ediion of he HDI (2010 and 2018); and Gianligi Goggi Ranal e e collaboae in HDI ome 1 (2010), xxx xxxiv. 226 conibion ae no lagel eified.

Een befoe ome of he eidence chola no hae ha cooboae hich

aage ee ien b Dideo, ciical eade eceied a diffeence in man of hoe

aage, ecogniing he imin of he Dideoian oice and dialogic le. In 1957

Han Wole aged ha hee liic diffeence eealed he hiloohe of Lange in ceain aage: le conibion de Dideo on le mocea dloence, le digeion, deloemen e conidaion don le ee de lHe de de Ide e aem. []. Le le mme de ce ineolaion fai n el conae aec le ee fondamenal e lon e end come ne main diffene a en la lme.73

While hee ae conflic in he infomaional conen fom aio collaboao

eling in conadicion in he e, liicall hee ae no man diinc aiaion in

iing le o diingih e ien b Ranal fom ha ien b Pechmja,

Delee, o ohe conibo. Hoee, Dideo conibion all and o and add aie and comlei o he ok. Oe he ediion, hi conibion heled o

h he adaci of he ok o he oin of aacing he ie of he chch and he monach. I ha been ggeed ha Ranal ma hae been naae of ho conoeial Dideo inceaing conibion o he ediion of he He de de

Ide ee. Jace-Heni Meie (1744-1826), ho a Melchio Gimm ecea, ae o Dideo aaene of he dange and Ranal illing acceance of i.

Meie ie ha hen Dideo old aie hi concen, Li-mme [Dideo] ai

oen effa de la hadiee aec laelle il faiai ale on ami: Ma , li diai-

73 Hans Wolpe, Raynal et sa machine de guerre: e de de Ide e e perfectionnements (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), 189. 227 il, ea ge cea? M, li ondai labb, , d-e; ae .74

Befoe e ae led o conclde ha Dideo aage ae a odd ih he e of

Ranal e, e m emembe ha Dideo a a illing and long-em collaboao on he ojec oe hee ediion. Damien Ticoie eole he oenial dicod beeen Ranal aage and Dideo aage b illaing ho he boh ciie

he iolen colonialim of he Sanih and ohe Eoean oe, hile coneel adocaing fo a ciilied colonialim condced b he Fench. Ticoie ca he HDI in he fameok of Fench aioim and logical adancemen of he naion inee.

Th, Dideo aage ae be een in cone of inodcing ciicim of ohe naion, and no neceail eflecing on Fance on colonial behaio. Thee i a

endenc o egad hiloohe and ie ho ciied ae iniion a e-

eoliona fige, oking in ece again he goenmen. Dan Edelein emind

ha man of he gad e ee no el ciic of he ae, iing a

ohe fom he ild. The ofen held official oiion and ee conneced o co neok ih aing degee of official o.75

Thee i one moe dimenion o he elaionhi beeen Dideo iing and

Ranal ojec ha i oh eloing in he cone of fagmena oce. The fac

ha Dideo illingl oked omeime o 14 ho a da on he HDI, knoing ha he old no be cedied, indicae ha he hiloohe a ome benefi o iing n- cedied. If lieae i a ace ha allo gea feedom o ceae and eeimen in

74 Jacques-Heni Meie, A mne de Dideo, noe, in Oeuvres complètes de Diderot, ed. J. Assézat (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1875), xvii. 75 Dan Edelstein stresses this point in The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 89-93. 228 fom and idea, hen eha hi ene of feedom i heighened fo Dideo hile iing anonmol. Snil Agnani conjece ha hi fee ali led Dideo o def he la of he enccloedic imle, of he infomaion-eieal fncion of colonial knoledge a eifiable achie. In lieae, ha fom of iing in hich anhing can be aid,

Dideo i illing o ake a hogh o i eeme.76 Wih he aeal fo Dideo of he eeimenal iing feedom in mind, e can ee ha hee ae cogen agmen fo conideing Dideo diffeen oice ihin he HDI o be inegal o ha he and Ranal

ee bilding ih hei machine de gee.

Indeed, Ranal oiion of inflence ihin oefl hee of Fench ocie ceaed a neok of oce o e and ee infomaion on all manne of colonial and economic mae. Cenal o hee mae ee abee, cece, and ce. When conideing an em in e aoimael 250 ea ago, eeach ino

hei age and ignificaion a he ime i beneficial o o ndeanding he e and

omeime ield eendiio dicoeie of leical aociaion no lo o .

Deling ino he dicionaie and enccloedia of he ea eeal ho hieach and

oe imbalance ee imlici in he e od ed o commnicae abo colonial acii in eigheenh-cen Fance. Le eamine hoe hee ke em.

Power, by definition The Fench em abliemen fom he HDI ile can ceainl be

ndeood o mean he eablihmen of commecial and colonial oo in ohe land, b he leical aociaion in he eigheenh cen eeal milia and imeialiic

76 Sunil Agnani, Hating Empire Properly: The Two Indies and the Limits of Enlightenment Anticolonialism (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 36. 229 noion of agenc ha hae faded in moden age. The Gad Rbe diciona alo offe ha he em can deignae Acion dabli (de eonne), de abli, hich i illaed ih o eamle one milia, diibion de oe en one doccaion; he econd eamle i he acion of emie, Acion de ende ied dan

n a. Labee de Faa da e Ide. Poeion (ie de

oeion).77 Noe ha he effo o ece oiion in he Indie i he e eamle gien of he em abee. Anohe eamle cied fo abee, daing fom

he eal eigheenh cen, efeence he Fench in India, (1723). Emie. []

Colonie, comoi. Le abee faa de Ide. A commecial aec of

abee i highlighed in he hid definiion: Enemble de inallaion ablie

o leloiaion, le foncionnemen dne eneie.

Thogh i em of co-efeence, Dideo and dAlembe Eccde

efe he eade fom abliemen o abli hee one find:

Eab cece aec de a aage, ce coneni aec elle de condiion o leelle on e ngocie, de machandie on enda delle, & de celle on end le donne en change. Eab e aface; ce, en conence de lee aene on a obene, aemble de oie & de maiee; faie conie de machine o de mie conenable a oage on e eneende ; enfin occe de fabian, oie & aian, on a aaaan ini, a offe o ae choe o leelle on a oben le iilge. [] Eab c, e ge, e face; ce mee n machand & de commi aec de machandie dan n lie oe o le ngoce. Voe Comoi, Loge, Facoie.78

77 1. Grand Robert de la langue française Online, .. abliemen, acceed August 17, 2019, https://gr-bvdep-com.ezp2.lib.umn.edu/robert.asp 78 Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc., eds. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembe. .. Eabli, Uniei of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 Edition), Robert Morrissey and 230

In hi eigheenh-cen ndeanding, an abliemen i fi an ageemen

ih a ading ane ho i een a an nciilied naion, one of lee a. Thi ageemen eablihe he condiion of negoiaion (deied b he Eoean ane a

he ndeood aneceden of he bjec onon on). Fhemoe, he ageemen idenifie he mechandie ha he Eoean ane ill ake [on enda] fom hem, and hen he mechandie ha ill be gien in echange. Thi definiion eablihe he lee a of he non-Eoean ading ane a a naion aage. Folloing fom

he alificaion of he ading ane naion a aage, he eiable eamen of la i ino eion a a aage i b definiion oide ciilied la. Thi e

he age fo legiimiing he focefl acion of aking mechandie fom hem and giing

o hem ohe mechandie in echange. Noe ha he acii i no defined iml a echange o ade, b a aking and giing. The gendeing of he nciilied naion

ih he feminine elle i gammaicall nemakable b eoke an neal oe dnamic beeen male and female of he eiod, aibing moe oe o he Eoean

ading ane. Wha ill be aken fom he foeign oe i aed ih he ceain of

he Fench f e eb ene; ha ill be gien in echange i nanced a lighl le ceain hogh he eeion on end le donne en change. In ha eeion, one ha he inen o gie ha mechandie in echange, b hi i no a deciie a concion a if he en had aid on donnea en change, maching he concion of he fi half of he hae. Again, hi heoical concion gge an

Glenn Roe (eds), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/. 231 neal oe dnamic in he eablihmen of ade. Wih hi enhanced leical comehenion, e can ead he ile of he HDI in a moe oliicied a, ndeanding ho he od ignified o a eade of he eiod.

The hea eence of eamle and efeence o India and he Indie in he definiion of abliemen demonae he cenali of le Inde in he

eeenaion of commece in he mid- o lae eigheenh cen. In boh he hio of

he em in he Gad Rbe, and he definiion gien in he Eccde, e find an

neal oe dnamic ih eihe miliaiic oeion of anohe eio o

ading ageemen bl conceied o naalie he adanage of he Eoean ane oe he naion aage.

Commece i a conce fndamenal o ade and abliemen, and i i aied

ih he lae in he ile of he HDI He e e e de

abee e d cece de Ee da e de Ide. Conide he cae of ho commece a conceied of and eeened in eigheenh-cen Fance. The diciona of he Acadmie fanaie fom 1762 gie o definiion:

COMMERCE. s.m. Trafic, négoce de marchandises, dargent, soit en go, oi en dail. [] La Paix entretient le commerce, fait aller le commerce, fait fleurir le commerce, met de l argent dans le commerce. La guerre fait cesser le commerce, rompt le commerce. COMMERCE signifie aussi Communication & correspondance ordinaire avec quelqu un, soit pour la société seulement, soit aussi pour quelques affaires. [] Avoir commerce, entretenir commerce avec quelquun. Ils ont grand commerce ensemble. Ils sont en grand commerce lun avec lautre. [] On dit, quUn homme est dun agréable commerce, dun bon commerce, pour dire, quIl est dagréable société: Et dUn commerce sur, pour dire,

232 quOn peut se fier à lui, quon peut lui confier ses secrets.79

Thee definiion emind ha in addiion o he economic ene, commece alo mean

ocial ineacion and commnicaion. Again, hi ocial connoaion i mch le common in en-fi-cen age. The olalence of he em commece allo

he HDI o gee oad he economic of ade hile alo eoking he idea of oiie

ocial ineacion.

The Eccde ha 25 enie ih he headod conaining commece. The main aicle iled COMMERCE i ien b Fanoi Von de Fobonnais. The definiion of commece in he Eccde combine he o main ene ha ae gien in he diciona of he Acadmie fanaie: On enend a ce mo, dan le en gnal,

ne commnicaion cioe. Il alie l aicliemen la commnicaion

e le homme e fon ene de odcion de le ee & de le indie.80

Fobonnai aicle on he hole eoe a eligio, oidenial oin of ie, baing commece on he inenional deign of a diine ceao ho fahioned he naal old in ch a a a o diibe naal eoce and agicle o ha hman being in diffeen egion/conie old ae be inedeenden on one anohe, ading fo

ha he needed o aned. Fobonnai eem o hae he HDI ie oimiic ie of he amelioaing inflence of commece on inenaional elaion:

La Poidence infinie, don la nae e loage, a ol, a la ai elle and, mee le homme dan la dendance le n de

79 Dcae de Acade faae 4h ed., (Bne, 1762), .. commece. 80 Commece, Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc., eds. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. 3:690, University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 Edition), Robert Morrissey and Glenn Roe (eds), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu.ezp2.lib.umn.edu/. 233 ae: le me en a fom le lien, afin de oe le ele conee la ai ene & aime.81

Thee definiion of commece ee o ho ha ndeling he inee in ade,

hee i an anie abo conflic abili o an end o commece: la ai fai flei le commece, b la gee fai cee le commece. Pal Chene highligh anohe aec of he ocial enion ha an eanding mecanile cla laced on he oliical

hee a global commece fed local oei. He noe ha Fench elie had o come

o em ih a oblem ha had become alien ince he eeneenh cen: ha a

he mo aoiae oliical em fo a old ode baed on commece ahe han on

eioial cone?82 Thi meoolian anie confimed a hif in oliical

eecie, b ill ndelaed he cone inheen in commece and colon.

A moden eade old likel no aociae he od abliemen ih colon.

The Fench od moe likel aociaed i, of coe, colonie. The aicle in he

Eccde fo Colonie a alo ien b Fobonnai, ho enned he main aicle fo Commece. Ineeingl, hile hee ae ofen mlile enie in diffeen caegoie fo man od in he Eccde, colonie ha onl e aicle ih ha headod. Thi eem like a conico concenaion of meaning ino one aicle. I can onl conjece ha hi a in an effo eha o conol o confine e ha cold be conoeial and land he ie in eil. Colonie i a em a he ineecion of hio and commece, a indicaed b he claificaion of hi ingle en nde hee domain: He dee, He acee, Cece. A he end of he en, he

81 Commece, Encyclopédie 3:690. 82 Paul Burton Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce: Globalization and the French Monarchy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 53. 234 aho once again einfoce he cenal ole of commece fo colonie b indicaing ha

he oe lace o ead abo he colonial endeao of conemoa Eoean oe i nde he bheading commece ihin he Eccde aicle on each Eoean naion. Colonie i defined e boadl a fi: on enend a ce mo le ano dn

ele, o dne aie dn ele, dn a n ae.83 The aicle hen diide colonie ino i clae baed on he oe fo fonding he colon.

The fi fo clae of colonie decibe aio hioical o Biblical iaion

hee one go of eole moed o ee moed o manage olaion goh of

aio kind. B he fifh cla of colon i elaed o commece. Thee colonie ae

celle a fonde lei de commece, & i enichien la moole.84 Thi cla of colon coni of ading o and onghold deo o o long-ange ading.

Uing he eamle of Eoean eablihmen in India, Fobonnai ecifie ha hee colonie ae deenden on a cage and m be emoeed o make and mainain

oliical ageemen, oenibl ih he local ho con. And e, hi e of colon canno engage in cone o ele i cone ino anohe cla of colon and m hen be fnded b he goenmen.

The ih cla of colon eceie he mo aenion. While mo of he ohe clae of colonie ae ien in aoimael 100 o 400 od, hi ecion eigh in a 1,239 od ele ime he lengh of he hoe e, hee ime a long a he ne longe aage. Thi ih cla of colon i decibed a nel emeging fom he

Eoean encone ih he Ne Wold of he Ameican coninen and iland. Toe

83 Colonie, Encyclopédie, 3:648. 84 Colonie, Encyclopédie, 3:649. 235 celle de ce coninen on e le commece & la cle o--la-foi o obje de le

abliemen, o on one: d-lo il oi nceaie de coni le ee, & den chae le ancien habian, o en anoe de noea.85 Thi ne aie of commecial colon alo ha agiclal odcion a i eenial oe. Whee a

el commecial colon co-ei ih he indigeno eole (accoding o he i clae of colon in he Eccde), a Ne Wold colon delo a docine of e

[hing oned b no one], o moe accael ea [nobod land]. The eiing indigeno olaion i emoed boh hicall and conceall conideed no o be effeciel in oeion of hei land. Thi ae of affai emi

he coloniing con o declae he land a iho an one o an agen making effecie e of i, and h fee fo he aking iho chae, ea, o fomal declaaion of a.

[La] libe doi e eaine en fae de la moole, declae hi en b

Fobonnai, in a eie of aemen ooing ice goenmenal conol fo hi e of colon.86 A fhe eicion on hi ne e of colon i ha i ade i eeed ecliel fo he fonding con. The nidiecionali of ade benefi defie he

ocial ineacion connoaion of commece in eigheenh-cen Fench cle. To maimie he ofi of ch a colon, i m no eend eoce and caial oide he confine of inceaing odcion. Deendenc on he fonding con i a deign faco fo ch a colon: le colonie ne eoien l ile, i elle ooien e ae de la moole: aini ce ne loi ie dan la nae de la choe, e lon doi

85 Colonie, Encyclopédie, 3:650. 86 Colonie, Encyclopédie, 3:650. 236 eainde le a & la cle dan ne colonie, el & el obje. Th, a colon of

hi e ill lack ceain eenial ha can be oided onl b he homeland.

Hoee, along ih he ggeion ha hi ih e of colon, hi Ne Wold

e of colon, eie geae conol o mainain benefi fo he meoole, hee i alo a modeaing caion ha he effec of hea-handed oll and nde eicion of feedom in ade ma hae a magnified effec in colonie of damening ii and

heeb diminih odcii fo he meoole. While a fi he aicle caion ma

eem hmaniic, hee ggeion ae eealed o be iml he hband echnie o mainain efficien odcion. An oeie olic i o be aoided in managing a colon becae ch a olic old conibe dimine la ani de la dene o la enchi, dimine nceaiemen le bnfice de la moole, & foni a ae

ele ne occaion faoable de gagne la ioi, o dene en concence.87

Thi giding aionale i no he inciemen of Roea, ho age fo he nieal digni of hman being in Te Sca Cac, Lhomme e n libe, e ao il e dan le fe, Rahe, hi aicle i a agmaic eaie on he mo effecie a o coa

ofi fom a colon, conceied of hee almo a of a machine o odce good and

ofi.88 McClellan and Regod decibe hi colonial machine a an elaboae ae- leel cienifico-medical-echnical beacac e in lace o o and adance he

Fench eence oeea.89 Thi elaboae inface a in lace o o he

87 Colonie, Encyclopédie, 3:651. 88 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social; ou principes du droit politique (Amsterdam: Marc Michel Rey, 1762), Livre I: Ch. I. 89 James Edward McClellan and François Regourd, The Colonial Machine: French Science and Overseas Expansion in the Old Regime (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 41. 237 diibion of eole o lace of milia o mecanile benefi, b alo o caefll conol he homeland emigaion oad fone and foeign hoe.

Thi Eccde en heefoe ha o caion abo he eole of he colon; he ae he machine of odcion and hold be encoaged o inceae hei on olaion, e hi inceae hold no come a he eene of he homeland

olaion. Fobonnai een inclde an admonihmen o eme he enhiam of he geneal olaion of he meoole fo joining a colon o ha he home con doen deolae.

The aicle on colonie ae ha he colonie en Amie called fo ne la becae hee colonie eablihed a noel fom of deendence and commece, making he cae ha hi colonial iaion i nie. Thee ne la m be monioed and balanced again he odcii of he colon, a he la m ala end oad inceaing he commecial iabili of he colon, hich i he eenial goal of hi e of colon: il e aie e ce loi deiennen conaie lobje de liniion, i e le commece.90 Again, emhaiing commece ole, he aicle ae, ce le commece i a on acii en a donn oe le colonie n e floiane.91

The aneceden fo he onon en hee i age and cold efe o commece, acii, o jice (efeing o he bai fo he la of he colon). The adjecie floiane naalie he acii of he colon ia a boanical meaho hee he colon go and odce like a lan ha floihe. The floe i a beaifl eeenaion,

omiing he fi ha i o come. The colon i figed a naal, beaifl, feile, and

90 Colonie, Encyclopédie, 3:650. 91 Colonie, Encyclopédie, 3:650. 238 ojeced o ien, h oiding enance in he nea fe.

O cloe anali of he leicon of commece and colon in he eigheenh cen highligh he oe of langage o hae hogh. In hi eiod he Fench

od cece animae colonial ndeaking and he em feigh oiie denoaion of eciocal ocial and economic echange. Hoee, he imeialiic ool of commece, abee, and ce, canno be oken of iho inoking he

od inheen aociaion ih milia oeion and oe imbalance, hile alo naaliing hoe idea hogh he boanical/oological leical aociaion of he em.

In effec, he langage eiocae and limael jifie he eio oiion of he

Eoean.

Among he od ha ae cenal o he e and conce of he HDI, e find he langage of he eiod naaliing he eablihmen of colonie and legiimiing he focefl eie of naie eole land. The iolence inheen in hee aciiie i modeaed b a caion fo he e-condiion of elaie eace and ocial ineacion

eied fo ofiable commece. Commece i h he inigao and miigao of he

iolence in imeialiic colonial acii.

Conclusion The He e e e de abee e d cece de

Ee da e de Ide i a comle e. We can ao i comlei if e conide i like a eade, a a hole, ahe han diiding i ino fagmen o idenif

oce. I hae aged ha he book deie i eneg, ahoi, and claim on eade

hogh i inenal enion beeen o aicla mode of eeion. The dialoge and enion beeen hee mode inheen in he ok efom i mlidimenional 239 holene in he ame a ha o eaae eake ae eied o ceae eeo ond.

Annonced fom he ile ielf, he book i a aado, combining o mode of iing

ha ee, accoding o Ranal himelf, incomaible. Ranal aed ha a hioian m be caefl no o oi d caace dhioien o ende celi de hiloohe o de

oliie.92 And e, in 1770 a in 1774 and 1780, i i indeed an imoing hio ha

eek o combine boh he hiloohical and he oliical ha Ranal blihe. The

eade ene ino a comle ok ha i figal a eal a he ile ielf. Une hioie

hiloohie e oliie oai n me de eenaion don le ie, dan le

eli de lnonc e la dlici de on langage, ai ne fige.93

Pomoing he ichne of he HDI hen aken all ogehe, Sgnell claim

Lenemble no offe ne hioie iane, oiginale bien e fonde de mlile

cie, e aocian anale e anecdoe, deciion e naaion, haange e ehoaion, comme o mie adie la ichee, la comlei e lambialence d monde: celle o de lOien e d Noea Monde, le de Inde d ie [] 94

I am no alone in aging ha he HDI i a eaie, anfomaie, and enchaning e. Han Wole inee he aim of he HDI o be a ide change in he

ocie of eigheenh-cen Fance. He ie, lHe de de Ide e ne ame de comba (e olmie deiennen de l en l e); ce n oil dein

claie le blic (le infomaion, o le je, deiennen de l en l

92 Hessiche Hofbibliothek, ms. autograph 335, De He, p. 173 cited in Michèle Duchet, Dde e He de de Ide ce fageae (Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1978), 159. 93 Duchet, Dde e He des deux Indes, 161. 94 Anhon Sgnell, Inodcion Gnale, in HDI 2010, 1:iii. 240 nombee e cie). Ce o n moen de ei la Cae, non n b en oi.95

Slana Tomaelli affim he efomaie nae of he HDI, aing Ranal and

Dideo ok came o be an endeao o anfom he anfome, hoe ho had changed he old hogh hei commecial i.96

In hi chae e hae eloed he e of he HDI efom anfomaion.

Signaled and iniiaed b he ile ih i ineeiel-comleifing ai of em, he

HDI een a eade ih a e ha confon, dienchan, eho, and e-enchan he

eade conceion of elf and he old. Commece i feenl he od ha da ciical aenion in hi ok, b o anali of he Inodcion ho ha he eak ineni of ha e foce on aaining an aide of enlighened hiloohical deachmen. Thi hiloohical oin of ieing i neal o ofeion, faih, and naionali in ode o eceie and jdge he old in a mode of ee, o ain ea o imecaion on iaion accoding o hei ie o angeion again hmankind. The nlikel aiche of aage aing in le beeen a oice of

oliical hio and a oice of hiloohical hio ceae a e nlike an ohe a

eade i likel o find. The hioical oice lend cedibili, hile he hiloohical

oice enchan ih an eeece. Thi eeience occ in he ac of eading e and image. The inimac of conac ih anohe hogh and feeling in he a eading bing hem ino he eade mind i j ho of magic, and i indeed a ecla fom of enchanmen, ih he oenial o no onl change one mind, b eha een change

he faon de ene ha i o a he eiemological fame ih hich one

95 Hans Wolpe, Raynal et sa machine de guerre, 18. 96 Tomaselli, 77. 241 comehend he old.

The He de de Ide ciie, cone, and ndoe adiional ahoi in hioiogah. Thi o of nmooing fom faih in a adiional ahoi el in he lo of a ene of oganiaion and connecion o a eio eiemological ode. A e hae diced ealie, dienchanmen el fom an ch dilocaion hehe fom a diine o ecla ahoi. Feed fom he eio neok of aociaion (eligio,

eiio, mhological), ie and hinke of he eigheenh cen like Ranal and Dideo ee able o eflec ciicall on he old and ocie aond hem,

anfom he old ih figal langage, and inie hei eade o ene and conine i ceaion ih hem.

242

Conclusion Disenchantment and Re-enchantment: Rhetorical Tension in the Siècle des Lumières

[] ce illsre naigaer resserr de oes pars par les riages de ce globe, qi noffre pls de mers ses aissea, e connaissan désormais la mesre de nore plane, comme le die qi la arrondie enre ses mains. Ceeda, il fa lae, ce e gag d c de sciences, nous le perdons en sentiment. Lme des anciens aimai se plonger dans le vague infini; la nôtre est circonscrie par nos connaissances. Qel es lhomme sensible qi ne ses ro soen lroi, dans ne peie circonfrence de qelqes millions de liees?1

As e come o he conclsion of his projec, e ill ake a final look a he problemaics discssed and consider he implicaions of enchanmen and episeme for reading eigheenh-cenr French lierare and inersecional es ha blr generic lines. Afer ha discssion, e ill hen demonsrae ho he approach elaboraed in his disseraion can be applied o render legible he poenial for episemic disrpion in es beond hose of or case sdies. Ho does his approach ork for es ha are not prpored o be par of a knoledge projec specificall he ider orld of he eigheenh-cenr noel. To es his hpohesis, e ill anale a sample passage from

Rosseas La Nouvelle Hlose. Finall, e ill discss he ke implicaions of his research and he fre direcions here his line of inqir ma lead.

1 Emphasis mine. François-Ren Chaeabriand, Essai sr les rolions, in uvres compltes (Paris: Arvensa Editions, 2013), 2456-57. 243

A view of the whole Figural thinking with text and image One of he hreads ha has ond hrogh all he chapers of his disseraion is an eaminaion of he presence and prpose of engraed illsraions in each of he case sd es. The role of he images in hese orks can be ndersood as a a of emploing figral hinking o eperimen ih he limis of cogniie hogh. The images eend he eal sraegies b offering he ieing/reading sbjec an eperience

ha challenges preios concepions. The images e hae sdied presen a non-erbal

a o eperimen ih he limis of cogniion o process a consiie ension concerning he meaning of he ork.

As e hae seen in each of or chapers, one par of a es poeic ork is performed hrogh he sbjecs ac of inerpreing he e. A isal eension of his performaie ork inoles he senimenal or affecie commnicaion coneed

hrogh he figral. While one ma be emped o regard he isal as an aonomos elemen beer lef o be analed b ar hisorians, he reading sbjec enconers e and image ogeher as par of he same eperience of he book, and in or seleced es

he images and e ere boh prodced nder he direcion of he ahor and hs possess a cerain claim o ni. This indicaes a greaer degree of ediorial ni han if he images ere insered b he priner, as as no ncommon a he ime. Aending o he illsraions in or seleced es hen can help s beer ndersand he orks capaci o change he readers manner of hinking abo nare ia he mode of sentiment, hich is perhaps beer rendered hrogh isal and figral commnicaion.

244

Syntheses and synergies As saed before, he figraion resling from he opposiion beeen disenchanmen and re-enchanmen consies he hear of he disseraion. As e hae seen, his opposiion is a mea-episemological srcre ha generaes a ealh of opposiel charged binaries pariclar o he e and is criical isses. Idenifing and ealaing hese opposiions adances and complicaes or ndersanding of

Enlighenmen es. Throgho his sd I hae analed a nmber of hose opposiions in he arios orks considered. When e look a a collecion of hese rheorical opposiions, organied b he fncion he sere in a pariclar e, a picre begins o emerge of ho hese polariies shape he dnamic of hese orks.

Diechame Re-echame

Ssme Senimen

Descripion Hisoire, Narraion

Declaraie (Discrsie) Figraie Discorse

Redcie Hisor Creaie Ficion

Hisor Engagemen

Hisor Philosoph

Informaion Composiion

Redcie Generaie

Informaional Lierar

Criical Senimenal

Hisorical Affecie

245

Throgho his disseraion, he model I hae sed o illsrae he a disenchanmen and re-enchanmen fncion together is designed o sho ho he break, blend, and rese concepal frameorks, no js modif informaional conen

ihin an eising frameork. One eample of his is seen in or analsis of he Histoire des deu Indes here he rheorical ension orks o break fied beliefs and reformlae

he concep of Eropean ciili, blending he iros ideals of Erope ih he bondless freedom represened b he figre of naies of a ild land. This beeen-he- saed-ales concepion of ciili enchans hrogh he appeal of a rese o he original sae of hmankind in nare before he corrpion of he polis his imagined rese presening a seclar prelapsarian idll. The rheoricall sblime momen of forhrigh pri in a sae of nare conjres an organiing schema for his alernae ie of hmankind eising in he orld and hrogh a pariclar relaionship ih nare and oher people.

As his projec dras o a close, ha can e conclde from hese analses? I is no apparen ha French es of he eigheenh cenr ha are concerned ih knoledge ork abond in binar opposiions ha hae episemic fncions. The

Histoire naturelle re-ries he approach o naral hisor, insising ha he person ho

old rl ndersand he naral orld ms possess he abili o encompass boh he opposing skills of global perspecie and aenion o deail. General sstme and pariclar obseraion ie for a primar role in he pracice of descripion, ih he

Histoire naturelle emanaing from a poin somehere beeen he o o creae an

246 innoaie and disrpie a o hink abo he ac of represening nare on he rien page. A deep diision, reealed een in he organiaion of he able of conens, races

he ension beeen narraion and descripion. In Paul et Virginie e enconer he polari beeen sentiment and sstme in Sain-Pierres mli-genre qes o find he proper rheoric o describe he hman ecolog of colonial islands. Despairing of a socie ha rejecs rhs and elcomes ficions, Sain-Pierre eplicil embraces ha opposiion o rie his obseraions of a cerain kind of rh in a ficion, coning on he affecie hinking mode denoed b he erm sentiment o commnicae a rh of he hear raher han a rh ha is a maniplaed objec of he mind. Trning or aenion from Mariis o he broader colonial cone, e again find a profsion of opposiions in he Histoire des deu Indes. The collecie riing carries he reader from nmbing qaniaie deail o soaring philosophical heighs, rendered b differen rheorical modes in passages ofen disrpiel joined. We pondered in Chaper 3 heher

commerce is he mediaing force beeen poliical hisor and philosophical hisor.

Image paired ih e in he HDI creae a dialecical relaion beeen Ne World

naral social ales and Eropean ciili in an effor o break don a preios concepion and gie meaning and srcre o a proposed ne model of ciili.

Throgho all of hese es, he more e applied he lens of re-enchanmen, he more

e obsered ension beeen binar pairs orking o disrp a orldie fonded on belief in ranscendenal or radiional ahori. The argmens generaed b hese binaries do no persade he reader o consider an alernaie rh of spernaral ahori, b insead offer he eperience of empirical ahori as reliable and

247 responsie o he desire for possession and maser of he naral orld and is prodcs.

Naral hisor and he effor o maser and possess nare as a nes of rheorical

ension aimed a episemic disrpion in he eigheenh cenr.

We ished o challenge he heoreical assmpion ha disenchanmen and re- enchanmen are o separae processes in a seqence, ih re-enchanmen fond onl in laer orks ha respond o earlier moemens of disenchanmen. The analses in or case sdies sppor he argmen ha disenchanmen and re-enchanmen can occr

ogeher in he same ork. In fac, e find ha he heoreical lens of disenchanmen and re-enchanmen helps s o ndersand he opposiionali inheren in cerain orks and, a imes, een inclded as a conscios design elemen.

Or eaminaion and close reading of he es in his sd reeal some of he choices ha en ino he design of hese orks. Narraie ficion, figraie langage, and images ere iral reali eperience ools of cerain es ha fncioned o elici change in a reading sbjecs episemic frame of reference as ell as a change in heir sore of knoledge. The ension of polar binaries, mainained in he riing sch ha neiher one dominaes, creaes a posiion for he sbjec ha is aciel consrced somehere beeen he poles and in a a, unritable becase he ne concepion is being brogh ino being b he cogniie ork o inerpre and read he space beeen

he discorses. This nriable, sggesed space is pariclarl he realm of figral

hogh and performaie langage, raher han lieral and informaional langage.

Debaes cenering on he ineracion beeen cogniion and e ill conine o inform he a e ndersand figraie riing, and he a e perceie he orld and

248 een frame he bonds of ha percepion. This sd has highlighed one mehod of deling ino riing and ha e call lierare. I is m hope ha frher ork on he ariclaion beeen discrsie ensions and episeme ma ield insighs ha poin he

a o a ne ndersanding of he riing of he French eigheenh cenr.

To seize the world between description and narration (Chapter One) The encounter between knowledge and the page to contain it raised tensions underlying the culture and discourse of Enlightenment in eighteenth-century France. In the effort to separate saoir from its supernatural entanglements, writers employed multiple strategies. Clarity and utility found support from texts that emphasized empirical evidence and measurement, particularly when that evidence was organized on the page in a way that appeared to claim no rhetorical force, such as tables of numbers.

While text presents a representational model in the mind of its reading subject that requires linguistic discursive interpretation, illustrations present a simulacrum of direct sensorial experience through the visual. Some works relied more on figurative illustrations of vignettes and veered away from the empirical into the realm of the affective. Other works commissioned a third type of visual that offered a combination of the figural and the empirical the diagram.

Bender and Marrinan claim that diagrams are tools to think with. The word diagram has its origin in the Greek, dia meaning across, through, and gram from graphein meaning to write, mark, or draw. Oppositional pairs can be a tool to think with as well.

The opposition of concepts across from each other, fixed in writing to the paper by the author and experienced by the reader also describes the rhetorical tension we have

249 analyzed in case studies of eighteenth-century French texts. I have argued that these oppositions exist within the texts not as elements of information to be compared and contrasted, but rather they animate these texts through a three-dimensional tension experienced by the reader. This experience transcends the traditional semiotic arrangement, gesturing at figural meaning between signs. The experience of meaning held between meanings creates a new cognitive framework with which to comprehend the disrupted cosmos.

In Chaper One e eamined a commonl fond effor in he eigheenh cenr

o represen naral hisor in riing. Appling he criical discorse of he sicle des

Lumires o he represenaional pracices of breaking don he naral orld o hen organie and record i resled in he more comple descripie regime of Bffon and

Dabenons Histoire naturelle. Adhering o he rh claims permied b a raional maerialis episeme, he e discards preios as of knoing ndersood parl

hrogh belief ssems. Wheher hose belief ssems ere of faih in ranscenden diini, spernaral eplanaion, or seclar faih in he accmlaed ahori of preios knoledge es, sch beliefs cold no respond o he qesions essenial o an empirical maser of he naral orld. As eigheenh-cenr France sreched o imperialisic endeaors across he oceans o islands and lands onl hen becoming accessible in reliable manner b miliar and commercial ships, a ealh of birds, animals, plans, and naral prodcs neer before seen in Erope as nloaded in

Frances pors. Wih epansion of commerce and conqes, he naral orld knon o

Eropeans epanded oo.

250

Hoeer, ih he nknon came a ne imperaie o maser and possess hese resorces in he naion-sae compeiion for ealh, presige, and poer among Eropean conries as ell as heir merchan enerprises. Reliable knoledge of hese ne specimens cold separae hose ih he poer o heal from hose ha cold harm, and separae ha cold be eploied for profi from he aleless. This pressre creaed a crisis in he need for knoledge ha as no based on premises ha cold no be esed

ihin he confines of empirical approaches. The dominan episeme based on analog and faih in analogos reasoning sffered disrpion and replacemen.

In he pages of he Histoire naturelle e find a mehod and eample of ho o se aside nerifiable knoledge in faor of a a of knoing nare based in obseraion

(boh he vue gnrale and particulire). The pages, ables, and diagrams of he Histoire naturelle reeal a search for epression of his ne concepal frame. Qaniaie measremen sries ih narraie hisor o accrael represen he naral orld for sd and, imporanl, for master. The phsical separaion of hese differen kinds of

e in he HN shos he rialr beeen heir claims. Their join inclsion in a single

ork shos he necessi of heir opposiionali o he performance of he knoledge projec as a hole.

In or analsis, he ables of measremens and ekphrasic descripion ork o dispel he ahori claims of ranscenden or spernaral cosmolog. The highl figraie narraie passages ork o adorn ha neiled rh and embellish i in a manner o re-creae hmankinds relaionship o ha knoledge and resore a sense of scale and order, o resore an ais mundi. We fond i sefl o reeal he conors of his

251 opposiionali hrogh he heoreical lens of disenchanmen and re-enchanmen. This same heoreical framing srcred or approach o ndersanding he ork being performed b rheorical ension beeen descripion and narraion in he Histoire naturelle.

We are indebed o scholars like Michael Saler, Josha Land, and ohers ho adanced he concep of disenchanmen beond Ma Webers jdgmen of modern scienific professions. Ohers proposed he concep of re-enchanmen ha old sere as a reacionar gesre agains he cold rh lef b disenchanmen. This re- enchanmen he sa primaril occrring in nineeenh-cenr Romanic moemens o embrace sblime emoional reading of he naral orld, shading een ino he spernaral. In m research, hoeer, i appears ha re-enchanmen need no ai for a laer momen as a sor of delaed repl o disenchanmen as i ere, nor does re- enchanmen need o embrace he spernaral. I find in he riing of he French

Enlighenmen a complei ha responds ell o he paired fncioning of disenchanmen and re-enchanmen ihin he same e. B re-enchanmen I do no mean a refsal of he empirical o re-eil rh ih spernaral eplicaion, raher, I mean a seclar re-enchanmen ihin he riing.

How can a novel claim to complete a natural history? (Chapter Two) Wih Chaper To e ransiioned from he consideraion of a prel naral hisorical e in Chaper One o eamine a ork ha eoles from naral hisor o noel Paul et Virginie. The ahor, Jacqes Henri Bernardin de Sain-Pierre, roe

252 abo he naral orld as he sa i hrogh his oage o he island of Mariis.2 The pasoral noel Paul et Virginie represens he hird ieraion of Sain-Pierres effors o capre he naral orld on paper ih rheoric sied o epress he rh of his obseraions. Begn ih his rael accon in episolar form, Voage l'le de France,

herein he le de France as described in desolae and harsh erms, Sain-Pierre rned his riing on nare oard a more ambiios encclopedic-sle ork, he tudes de la nature. When his approach o describing nare did no saisf Sain-Pierre, he eenall emploed he greaer freedom of ficion o once again aemp o seie he

rh of nare in his riing. Wih he greaer fleibili of figraie langage, he noel replies o he raional rigidi of sstme ih he access o a cerain kind of rh beer afforded b sentiment as a mode of figral hinking/perceiing.

Sain-Pierre clearl ses p he opposiion sstme - sentiment and ies i o he rheoric sed o describe he naral orld seen in ligh of he discoeries from disan colonial lands.

Eloquence and gravitas retell the history of colony to reshape civility (Chapter Three) In Chaper Three e analed he opposiions inheren in he Histoire des deu

Indes as i discssed colonies and commerce. Throgh he lens of disenchanmen and re- enchanmen e raced he presence of ensions in he e relaed o ho one perceies

he orld. From a general sense of dali in he ile ha resonaes beeen histoire

2 Note that at the time this dissertation was written, Mauritius is again at the center of international ecological discussion due to the damage to the marine ecosystem caused by an oil spill when the ship MV Wakashio ran aground at Pointe dEsny on July 25, 2020. 253 politique and histoire philosophique, e ere able o derie oher binar opposiions in

he e ha conribed o he readers comple eperience of he ork and ma help o eplain is remendos appeal o readers of he lae eigheenh cenr. Called Ranals

machine de gerre, he e fncions o accomplish episemological disrpion, beond

he merel poliical objec of he machine.

Vieing he rejecion of preios radiions in hisoriograph as a form of disenchanmen, he ork consisenl ses daa sch as impor/epor qaniies of specific goods, poplaion demographics, and miliar assessmens o esablish an empirical basis for his hisor. These elemens lend discrsie graias o he e and asser he ili and ahori of his differen approach o hisor. One of he major differences ih his oher approach o hisor as o cleae aa eloqence dedicaed

o paining a iid b inaccrae picre of eoic locales. Ye, as e sa in correspondence and repored conersaions beeen o of he main ahors, Ranal and

Didero, he repdiaion of eloqence as inenionall paired ih eloqen passages.

The eloqence shnned as ha hich as deceiing (designed o romper la mlide), b he eloqence embraced as o sae he ork and render a differen kind of rh hrogh he eperience of he o discorses ihin he same ork. This sogh-afer philosophical eloqence boh in e and image creaes a pariclar kind of eperience for he reader. This eperience is one of engagemen as i brings he reader along as iral oer ino he deail of far-flng colonies and hen plls back o reeal for he reader a anage poin from hich o gain perspecie and isdom o conemplae

he eens and pracices described. The e ses his figral hinking o creae an

254 eperience o break and rese he readers frameork of percepion srronding commerce, colon, and naion.

The readers orldie is disrped ia his ne pracice of hisoriograph, and

hen re-enchaned ia he philosophical disance of ieing o creae a ne orldie.

The e does no merel adance argmens concerning ehical colonial relaions b brings he reader hrogh an eperience of his engagemen and models for he reader his ne manner of hinking, in hopes of changing he faon commne de penser, as as

he goal of he Encclopediss.3

Disenchantment and re-enchantment as a tool to read the eighteenth-century novel If disenchanmen and re-enchanmen fncion as I hae sggesed, ho migh

e read oher (more narraie) es like La Nouvelle Hlose in his ligh? This a of

npacking he binar ensions in riing of he French eigheenh cenr can appl o oher es of he period and help s o ndersand hem in a ne ligh.

Throgho his disseraion e hae applied he lens of disenchanmen and re- enchanmen o es manifesl abo knoledge prodcion, hogh asride clear disciplinar and genre diides ha old be more disinc oda. This heoreical frameork has been sefl o bring o he srface some of he consiie opposiionali in hese orks and consider he arios binar pairs in erms of he dnamic he impar

o he ac of reading. The sicle des Lumires is a niqe momen of episemic disrpion somehere beeen he premodern orld and he modern one. Since e canno poin o an one e or momen as the poin of ha change, e confirm Michel Focals

3 Denis Didero, Encclopdie, in Encyclopédie, 5:642A. 255 asserion ha he hisor of he dominan episeme in a gien clre a a gien ime is bes described in erms of laers of disrpion ha can onl be sdied as an archeologis

old a dig sie. We can see he eidence of he ne clre on op of he old clre bried beneah, b he are differen sraa.4 The break and disjncion reeal he

ransiion, hich is rendered as abrp. Ths, in hese es e can obsere he fncioning of he rheorical opposiions, race ha he disrp, and anale ha he propose as replacemen, in order o conjecre ha he ma hae had a role in sch episemic change.

Ye e hae no fll addressed ho his approach migh open pahs of inqir ino he inner orkings of noels. The eigheenh cenr in France sa genre eolions in longer-form ficion from he spraling seeneenh-cenr romance ino a period of eperimenaion hich old be folloed b he more cohesie narraie ficion of he nineeenh-cenr noel. Ths, he noel is a orhhile objec of sd. Ho does he lens of disenchanmen and re-enchanmen proide ne opporniies o discoer inerpreie dnamics for es ha eis almos holl in he enchaning, figrall-rich realm of ficion?

in Jean-Jacqes Rosseas La Nouvelle Hlose, Jlie dismanles and recreaes spaces ha hen effec a similar ransforming process on he characers ho ener hem.

One eample of his ransformaie ork is seen in he hose a Clarens ih is renoaions, replacing elemens ha ere largel ornamenal ih hose ha are sefl,

4 We are referring here to the archeological model in Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les choses; Une archéologie des sciences humaines, Bibliothèque des Sciences Humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). 256 b hich cleerl also agmen he bea and fncion of he hosehold a beneficial blending of he utile and he agrable. Een more sriking are he passages fearing

Jlies re-fashioned Else garden here S. Pre eperiences a ransformaion ihin himself and finds pon eiing he renoaed garden ha his aide oard Jlies hsband, M. de Wolmar, has changed from hidden jealos o a sor of ribal kinship. Le

s eamine in deail ho his occrs.

Analyzing the use of oppositionality to effect epistemic change in the novel La Nouvelle Héloïse The garden in La Nouvelle Héloïse effects a sensible cure through a process of disenchantment and re-enchantment. While the narrative voice in the novel Julie, ou La

Nouvelle Héloïse discorses a lengh abo nare, Rosseas force gahers no arond nature left to its own devices, but rather around carefully managed nature an experience crafted to naturalize its operation.5 Discrediting the taste of those who create jardins à la française with their symmetry and artificiality, Rousseau, however, does not advocate its simple opposite, la campagne perhaps, but rather a carefully harnessed nature as a sensory cure for St. Preux (and by proxy, all who are afflicted by passions out of balance).

In Par 4 of he noel, a highl senimenal S. Pre, formerl priae or o he

ong Jlie, finall seems o be on a rajecor o ranscend his illici passion for Jlie, no married. He is inied o isi ane he hose a Clarens here he firs me Jlie and

heir relaionship deeloped in complicaed spirals of friendship, fliraion, and iros

5 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie ou la nouvelle Héloïse (Paris: Garnier- Flammarion, 1967). 257 self-recriminaions. This ne isi seeral ears laer is proposed as a sor of cre of re- enchanmen herein he old associaions of he hose, gronds, and een of Jlie herself are o be broken and sbsmed in ne, healhier associaions.

Reading in Rossea a reflecion of Siss phsician Tissos heor of sensibilit,

Anne Vila proposes inerpreing he episode a Clarens as a sor of medicinal inerenion.

Haing passed hrogh heir man ordeals, he noel's proagoniss are no disposed boh o adminiser and o receie he remed proided b he holesome domesic milie of he Clarens esae, a seing ha is designed boh o foser sensibili and o keep i in is place.6 For his moral hgiene reamen o fncion, he esae a Clarens ms eoke an eperience ha prges he affecie disorder and sbsies ire for passion.

In Rosseas e, nare figres he operaion of empering he passions, b onl hrogh craed and cliaed nare, no ild nare. In Par IV, Leer X, S.

Pre describes for his friend Milord Edoard he ransformaions ha he Wolmars hae effeced a Clarens. The hae remoed ha as qe lornemen and replaced i ih

ha hich seres lsage of he masers of he hose. In his series of changes, e migh focs on he sbsiion of he utile for he agrable, b e gain addiional insighs if e are o consider one nature being sbsied for anoher nare.

The noels e shos s a shif from one mode of apprehending he naral

orld o a differen one. The changes ork o replace erbs and adjecies ih ohers

6 Anne C. Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology: Sensibility in the Literature and Medicine of Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 210. 258

ha reflec a simpler mode of eperience, less based in inellec and more gronded in percepions of he bod. The hose no longer mean o be vue, b habite; sentir la richesse et le lue becomes respirer labondance et la proprt.7 The oersimlaing paons criards are replaced b he cream of he laiterie, he floerbed is conered o potager, ih is semanic promise of norishing sop; rees and bshes ha ere

tristes, inutile, and vieu gie a o differen planings ha are bons, jeune, and hae he abndance of deu rangs, respeciel. A craed eperience of he maerial orld, pariclarl plan and animal, creaes a change for he isior o Clarens as ell as for he reading sbjec. The old regime of he esae a Clarens simlaed

hrogh more inellecal faclies, hile he ne regime makes apparen he shif in his passage o creae in he reader a phsical / corporeal eperience. As Meeker sggess in

Voluptuous Philosoph, his moe inscribes he e in a Lcreian Epicreanism, and I

old add ha i is a sraeg b hich his noel fncions o make he concepal maerial.8

Insaniaing he concepal is also obsered in he mserios enclosed Else garden a Clarens. Upon being graned admiance o he hidden hortus conclusus, S.

Pre a firs sffers disorienaion and hen proclaims feeling as if ranspored o he disan Pacific islands of Tinian or Jan-Fernande.

En enran dans ce prend erger, je fs frapp dne agrable sensaion de fracher qe dobscrs ombrages, ne erdre anime & ie, des flers parses de os cs, n gaoillemen dea corane & le chan de mille oisea, poreren mon imaginaion d moins aan q mes

7 Rousseau, 330. 8 Natania Meeker, Voluptuous Philosophy: Literary Materialism in the French Enlightenment (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006). 259

sens; mais en mme ems je crs oir le lie le pls saage, le pls soliaire de la nare, & il me sembloi dre le premier morel qi jamais e pnr dans ce dser. Srpris, saisi, ranspor dn specacle si pe pr, je resai n momen immobile & mcriai dans n enhosiasme inolonaire: O Tinian! Jan-Fernande!9

The text itself produces a feeling of disorientation in the reader through a combination of rhetorical strategies. The reader is alerted to the potential for disjunction between appearance and reali b he se of he adjecie prétendu o describe he erger he is entering. The passage then uses a passive construction to place the reader as the recipient of action (fus frappé), which is then whipsawed between the violent and the pleasant

(frapp dne agrable sensaion). After this point in the phrase, the reader would likely epec ha sensaion de fraicher migh be he sbjec of he clase, onl o find

he relaie pronon qe followed by a long accumulation of botanical, aquatic, and avian elements each qualified by a visual or auditory impression. The sentence then turns to reveal the principal verb 39 words from the beginning (portèrent), and the reader must return several lines above to reconstruct that the garden elements are the grammatical sbjec ha carries he fresh/cool sensaion o he narraors sense and imagination. It is a dizzying sensation to read the passage and navigate at the same time the syntactic construction of the phrase as well as sort out the almost synesthesic mélange of sensory imagery. Doubling the narrator, we are also left vertiginous by the attempt to reconcile sensory imagery, rhetorical acrobatics, and the energetic staccato sibilation of

9 Rousseau, 353. 260

he folloing senence (Srpris, saisi, ranspor ), sabiliing for a pase a he pensie consonance in m of n momen immobile.

Passing through the disorienting entry into the new garden space, we are presented with a vista so startlingly natural that for St. Preux it must represent the unspoiled original landscape of an exotic island. Why this insistence on a tropical island as a point of reference for a garden on a country estate in Switzerland? St. Preux is of course recalling his earlier travels that were part of his attempt to dispel his passion for

Julie, but it also functions to reinforce the readers sensitivity to the experience of the flora and fauna of this unique space. At a time when travel accounts brought back tales of newly-encountered places, the topos of the wild lands as echo of the lost innocence of the garden of Eden was a common theme. Laurence Cooper advances the idea that

Rousseau created evocative descriptions of natural settings expecting his reader to respond to them.10 These descriptions inspired a new sensibility to the beauty of the countryside. Accordingly, untouched natural spaces changed from lightly regarded to an acception of something good and pure. The figuration of this garden passage signals that this meaning is to be conferred on the enclosed garden via the reference to these tropical islands.

Admission o he hidden garden has heighened he epecaions of ha is o be fond ihin. Once inside, Jlie reeals ha his is a knon, b no nrecogniable place o S. Pre. Associaed ih an earlier sage in his relaionship o Jlie hen his

10 Laurence D Cooper, Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999). 261 passion simmered nder he hinnes eneer of social proprie, he orchard has

ndergone a ransformaion in order o faciliae ransformaion in ohers. Preiosl shoing dried grass, sparse rees, rare shade and lacking aer, he space is no lsh, green, and bedecked ih floers. The descripion is hick ih sensor imager, qickl srpassing he bonds of isal ar o depic he scene b eoking odor and acile sensaions. The garden eokes a he same ime a space creaed b naral forces and also

he iros direcing hand ha gides hose naral forces. The Else garden is an enclosed space of conemplaion, a hortus conclusus, o conain he imaginaion of hose

ihin, focsing he reflecion of isiors.11 S. Pre eners he garden he folloing da, hoping o ssain his non-iros loe for Jlie hrogh memories associaed ih he place, b insead finds limage de la er o je cherchois celle d plaisir.12 While none of he ehoraions and rials p o his poin in he noel hae scceeded in cring

S. Pre of his loe for Jlie, his eperience of cliaed nare in he Else garden finall recifies his sraing imaginaion and por dans [son] ame n calme prfrable a roble des passions les pls sdisanes.13 Ths he space of carefll managed nare orks o break preios associaions of passionae ecess, b does no leae S.

Pre coldl broken of his emoional aachmen for Jlie. Insead he eperience of he

11 There is a definite medieval and allegorical dimension to the work. Not only does this garden recall the medieval topos of the hortus conclusus, the title of the novel obviously refers to the original Heloise in the story of Heloise and Abelard. Similar to allegorical medieval French texts, Paul de Man reads Rosseas novel as an allegory of reading itself. Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979). 12 Rousseau, 365. 13 Rousseau, 365. 262 garden in he e replaces he preios senimens ih an appeal o ire and calm.

Vicariosl liing S. Pres eperience, he reader raerses hese same disenchanmens and re-enchanmens.

Here in the garden at Clarens, the natural setting which was the site of a previous conception of sentimental attachment, the owners of the property have removed the un- managed landscape hich as agrable, hs disenchaning i of he old affective resonances in a rn oard he more discrsie ile. However, M. de Wolmar does not simply demolish the old garden, erasing a location he knows is associated with an old flame of his wife before their marriage. Instead, he and Julie work together to re-fashion the garden in a way that tames passion and replaces enticing beauty with utility and reason. As S. Pres eperience of he garden shos s, his is no simpl pasing a new landscape over the old. Rather, the utility of the space is that it becomes an experience that disenchants passion and employs its recreated Eden to re-enchant the visitor with an interpersonal worldview marked by virtue and calm.

While there is much more that can be done to locate and analyze the oppositional pairs in this rich novel, this example serves as a preliminary taste of how applying the lens of disenchantment and re-enchantment can help us locate and interrogate instances of polarity connected to epistemic change in the novel as well as in knowledge project texts. This is fertile ground for future work and may help us better understand the complex experimentation of novelistic forms throughout the eighteenth century and their interaction with readers.

263

What directions does this research open for the future? To rern o he qesion ha began or sd, Wha is he fncion of he opposiionali e find in so man es of he sicle des Lumires? e find orseles a

he hear of an episemological conndrm. Throgh or eaminaion of es and heir engraed illsraions, e are no able o idenif he specific momen of shif from reliance on spernaral or radiional ahori o a raional maerial fondaion for rhs abo he naral orld. In Focals analsis e are ill-prepared o perceie he episemic fondaion of he momen in hich e sand i is a sor of concepal blind spo. We can endeaor o ecaae momens of he pas ha are consied differentl

han or on and mark heir ideni as adhering o anoher se of condiions of possibili for hogh. Ths, e can perceie he sraa of disrpion b no he deails of ransiion from one episeme o is scceeding episeme.

As his projec comes o a close, e no consider here his inqir ma lead o ne. I ill discss hree aenes opening from his research. The firs is o consider

ha happens afer he eigheenh cenr and ho he es of he nineeenh cenr respond o he changes in hinking sggesed b orks e hae sdied and ho e migh appl he concepal ools of disenchanmen and re-enchanmen o hem. The second aene makes a greaer leap o place es of he eigheenh cenr hich inoke colonial epansion in dialoge ih Francophone es from hose conries. Ho do he ideas eolled in he Histoire des deu Indes, he Histoire naturelle, or in leer 12 of he

Voage l'le de France complicae or complemen or ndersanding of es b eigheenh-cenr and conemporar Francophone riers? The hird aene of eploraion is o es more broadl he disenchanmen and re-enchanmen approach on 264 oher eigheenh-cenr es, o inclde noel-forms and plas ha are no eplicil projecs of knoledge ork. I discss hese aenes in more deail belo.

Potential application to nineteenth-century literature For his sd e hae focsed or analsis on French es of he eigheenh cenr. This selecion as an essenial crierion becase e ished o eamine he

riing sraegies of a momen and a moemen ha eplicil and self-consciosl called for criical eaminaion of he assmpions nderling radiional ahoriies and episemolog. The French sicle des Lumires, or he Enlighenmen, as characeried b his sor of disenchaning effor. When Kan roe his inflenial essa Wha Is

Enlighenmen? he arned abo an eas reliance on faih in religion and radiional ahori, riing, Saes and formlas, hose mechanical ools of he raional emplomen or raher misemplomen of his naral gifs, are he feers of an eerlasing

elage.14 For Kan, reliance on radiional ahori redced hmankind o a sor of

niersal immari bordering on seride o ssems and rles. To break hese shackles, he enjoined his readers o make he effor o hink criicall and challenge reliance on radiional as of hinking, Enlighenmen is mans release from his self- incrred elage. [] Sapere ade! Hae corage o se or on reason! ha is he moo of enlighenmen.15

Onard from he eigheenh cenr i ma be orhhile o inesigae in ha manner he disenchanmen and re-enchanmen approach has ale for he lierare ha

14 Immanuel Kan, Ansering he Qesion: Wha Is Enlighenmen? On History, trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), 5. 15 Kan, Wha is Enlighenmen, 7. 265 folloed in he nineeenh cenr. If he eigheenh cenr is characeried b a sor of

niersaliing criicism and disenchanmen, ha ill respond o or ool in nineeenh- cenr es characeried b he sblimaion of he descripie b he narraie, b a

Romanic appeal o he enchanmen of he senses and senimen, b eploraion of he figral poer of poeic langage o creae inense eperience of he pariclar? This remains a pah o be eplored, o challenge he eising conersaion abo re- enchanmen as a laer reacion agains earlier effors of disenchanmen.

Final thoughts Wih he Enlighenmen, savants and philosophes plled aside he eil of rh and fond he ligh of reason o be a errible gif a desolaing gif of sigh. In a second

Edenic momen e claimed raional knoledge and fond orseles naked in he cold ligh of reason. Onl his ime God did no come o banish s from he Garden, e had banished God, and he garden of or maerial orld as ha as oo eposed in his momen. Ths, in rn, ndersanding ha people hae a deep-seaed need of hopes and fears, philosophes re-enchaned he ligh, paradoicall giding hmani o he empire of reason b hrogh figral hinking in a manner palaable o comple and senimen-

hinking hman beings.16

16 Lespri hmain es dsabs de lancienne spersiion. Si lon ne profie de ce insan por le gider & le rendre lempire de la raison, il fa qe la masse gnrale des hommes qi a besoin desprances & de craines, se lire des spersiions noelles. Histoire des deux Indes, 4:468. 266 Bibliography

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