NEGOTIATING LITERARY IDENTITY DURING THE DIVIDE BETWEEN THE PHILOSOPHES AND THE ANTI-PHILOSOPHES (1745-1765) by Mert Ertunga BA, University of Alabama in Birmingham, 2007 MA, University of Pittsburgh, 2010 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2016 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Mert Ertunga It was defended on April 4, 2016 and approved by Lina Insana, Chair, Associate Professor, French and Italian Clark S. Muenzer, Associate Professor, German Todd Reeser, Professor, French and Italian Dissertation Advisor: Giuseppina Mecchia, Associate Professor, French and Italian Dissertation Advisor: Shane Agin, Associate Professor, French and Italian, Duquesne University ii Copyright © by Mert Ertunga 2016 iii NEGOTIATING LITERARY IDENTITY DURING THE DIVIDE BETWEEN THE PHILOSOPHES AND THE ANTI-PHILOSOPHES (1745-1765) Mert Ertunga, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2016 This dissertation centers on the negotiation of literary identity in the philosophes vs. anti- philosophes divide during the middle decades of the eighteenth century. During that time, the ideas of the philosophes were gaining ground in readership and popularity, and, as a consequence, their enemies were beginning to perceive their ideas as pernicious threats to the traditional values upon which the French monarchy was built. Voltaire, Denis Diderot, and Jean- Jacques Rousseau squared off against anti-philosophes such as Élie Catherine Fréron, Charles Palissot, and the abbé Nicolas-Sylvestre Bergier in debates concerning literature, religion, and education. Philosophes questioned the principles on which the old order rested and relentlessly called on “reason” to challenge prejudices, while the anti-philosophes accused their adversaries of conspiring to subvert the French monarchy by rattling the foundations of the established religious practices and social peace. The careers and writings of the playwright Michel-Jean Sedaine and the literary critic Élie Fréron are examined in the first two chapters as a means of analyzing the challenges faced by up-and-coming writers in order to establish legitimacy as an author in an unstable literary arena. There were also what I term the “ecto-philosophes,” writers who belonged neither to the philosophical camp nor to the anti-philosophical one. Their writings fell into oblivion for over two centuries as most scholarly studies have focused on the writings of the philosophes and their adversaries. The third and final chapter includes a detailed study of their contribution to the literary production during the conflict between the philosophes and the anti-philosophes. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ................................................................................................................................. VIII 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 2.0 MICHEL-JEAN SEDAINE’S PATH TO THE PHILOSOPHE CAMP ............... 20 2.1 BIRTH OF A WRITER: SEDAINE IN THE 1750S ...................................... 23 2.2 FRENCH THEATER PRIOR TO LE PHILOSOPHE SANS LE SAVOIR.. 27 2.3 LE PHILOSOPHE SANS LE SAVOIR AND THE POLEMICS OF THE DIVIDE…. ........................................................................................................................... 40 2.3.1 The plot, the censorship proceedings, and Sedaine’s fruitful persistence……………………………………………………………………………41 2.3.2 Sedaine’s drame: décor, monologues, intimate scenes, circonstance, and condition ...................................................................................................................... 48 2.3.3 Avoiding the polemics of the divide ........................................................... 58 2.3.4 Sedaine’s post-1765 career ......................................................................... 75 3.0 ÉLIE FRÉRON: IN THE HEART OF THE DIVIDE ........................................... 78 3.1 FRÉRON’S PATH TO JOURNALISM (1718-1749) ..................................... 81 3.2 FRÉRON’S CONCEPT OF “LA CRITIQUE” .............................................. 89 3.3 LETTRES SUR QUELQUES ÉCRITS: TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS 99 3.3.1 Confrontation with Marmontel in 1749: prelude to larger conflicts ... 102 v 3.3.2 1750: Voltaire confronts Fréron .............................................................. 105 3.3.3 1751-1752: More conflicts, more consequences...................................... 117 3.3.4 1752-1753: The last build-up before the definite rupture ..................... 125 3.4 L’ANNÉE LITTÉRAIRE: FRÉRON, THE ANTI-PHILOSOPHE ............. 134 3.4.1 1754: New periodical, more quarrels ...................................................... 135 3.4.2 1754-1755: The schemes of the anti-Fréron philosophes ....................... 138 3.5 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 144 4.0 ECTO-PHILOSOPHES .......................................................................................... 147 4.1 CULTIVATING AN INTELLECT: TIPHAIGNE’S TRAJECTORY FROM AMILEC TO SANFREIN ................................................................................................. 154 4.1.1 In search of coherence .............................................................................. 154 4.1.2 Choice of texts, Amilec and Sanfrein ....................................................... 163 4.1.3 Amilec’s Preface “Aux savants” .............................................................. 166 4.1.4 Representations of human shortcomings in Amilec ............................... 172 4.1.5 After Amilec, before Sanfrein................................................................... 179 4.1.6 Sanfrein ou Mon dernier séjour à la campagne ....................................... 182 4.1.7 Sanfrein’s narrator ................................................................................... 190 4.1.8 Girouette Sanfrein ..................................................................................... 193 4.1.9 Philosophe Soulange ................................................................................. 198 4.1.10 Sanfrein, Ecto-Philosophical text ............................................................. 204 4.2 SAINT-FOIX: ENGAGING BOTH CAMPS ............................................... 208 4.2.1 A Singular homme de lettres ..................................................................... 211 4.2.2 L’Oracle ..................................................................................................... 224 vi 4.3 WOMEN ECTO-PHILOSOPHES ................................................................. 230 5.0 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 251 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 254 vii PREFACE I would like to thank my dissertation co-advisors Dr. Giuseppina Mecchia and Dr. Shane Agin, and the members of my committee for their generous support and wonderful mentorship during the writing of this dissertation. I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my parents Arif and Diler Ertunga who would have been proud of me had they seen this day, to my brother Cenk whose support always felt very close although he was two continents away, and to my daughter Erin whose beautiful smile and glowing bright eyes, whenever I talked about my dissertation, always gave me the extra positive energy I needed, because I knew deep down that she did so not because she knew anything about my study, but simply because she loved me. viii 1.0 INTRODUCTION Eighteenth-century studies of French literature and culture have for the most part focused on the writings of the philosophes. John Lough, while underlining the difficulties of satisfactorily explaining who the Philosophes were, argues that “some sort of working agreement can be reached” among specialists of the eighteenth century.1 Taking into account what “contemporaries understood by the term,” he identifies Voltaire, Diderot, Raynal, Helvétius, d’Alembert, d’Holbach, and Condorcet as philosophes, and he mentions a number of others as likely candidates for the title, including Montesquieu, La Mettrie, Duclos, the Marquis d’Argens, Condillac, Toussaint, Marmontel, Abbé Morrelet, and Deleyre. Although Lough recognizes that other scholars have deemed Fontenelle and Dumarsais as being worthy of the title, he sees them as “precursors” (142, 147). Mark Hulliung, for his part, considers Voltaire and Diderot to be philosophes, and adds d’Alembert, Buffon, Condillac, Duclos, Grimm, Helvétius, d’Holbach, and Turgot as “supporting characters” of the philosophical movement.2 The philosophes’ crowning achievement was, without a doubt, the Encyclopédie (1751- 1772). Although initially conceived as a simple French translation of Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopædia (1728), the Encyclopédie quickly became “a massive reference work for the arts and 1 John Lough, “Who Were the Philosophes?” Studies in Eighteenth-Century French Literature Presented to Robert Niklaus, eds. J. H. Fox, M. H. Waddicor, and D. A. Watts, (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1975), 140. 2 Mark Hulliung, “Cast of Supporting Characters,” The Autocritique of Enlightenment: Rousseau and the Philosophes,