Diderot's readers: Interacting across genres.
Item
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Title
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Diderot's readers: Interacting across genres.
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Identifier
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AAI9986364
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identifier
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9986364
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Creator
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Owens, Maureen E.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Nancy K. Miller
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Date
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2000
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Romance
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Abstract
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In this thesis I looked at how Diderot inscribes readers in his text and found that he uses similar techniques in genres ranging from the novel, to the short story, to the Encyclopedie to the Salons. Due to the difficulties of publishing in 18th-century France Diderot had to manipulate three distinct audiences: the censors who were a great threat to Diderot and his work, the bourgeois reading public who was looking for a pleasurable reading experience, and the astute readers who would understand Diderot's philosophical message. Chapter one studies Diderot's use of a pornographic subject to entice readers and divert censors. In chapter two, I suggest that Diderot's message is to be found as much in the form as in the content. These two chapters also consider how these texts are read today and in particular how men and women readers might interpret the texts differently. In writing the Encyclopedie Diderot carefully addressed his audience in the Prospectus and in the article "Encylopedie" and d'Alembert does the same in the Discours preliminaire. This was necessary because in constructing the Encyclopedie Diderot conceived of an innovative type of reading that is not linear but rather decentered. The Encyclopedie is in fact organized in a way that is similar to the Internet of today. Finally, in the Salons Diderot addresses a much more restricted audience of fifteen aristocrats but he varies his way of to the paintings so that a wide range of readers would find his text meaningful. Diderot tries to elicit in his readers the same reaction that he himself had to the paintings and uses a multiplicity of writing techniques to do so.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
