Enlightenment
A Dangerous Man in the Pantheon
This October marks 300 years since the birth of French Enlightenment thinker Denis Diderot. Although perhaps best known for co-founding the Encylopédie, Philipp Blom argues for the importance of Diderot's philosophical writings and how they offer a pertinent alternative to the Enlightenment cult of reason spearheaded by his better remembered contemporaries Voltaire and Rousseau. more
Although Jacques Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire infernal, a monumental compendium of all things diabolical, was first published in 1818 to much success, it is the fabulously illustrated final edition of 1863 which secured the book as a landmark in the study and representation of demons. Ed Simon explores the work and how at its heart lies an unlikely but pertinent synthesis of the Enlightenment and the occult. more
Marvellous Moderns: The Brothers Perrault
Charles Perrault is celebrated as the collector of some of the world’s best-known fairy tales. But his brothers were just as remarkable: Claude, an architect of the Louvre, and Pierre, who discovered the hydrological cycle. As Hugh Aldersey-Williams explores, all three were able to use positions within the orbit of the Sun King to advance their modern ideas about the world. more
The Adventures and Experiences of the First Slovak Novel
Partially banned upon publication and translated into English for the first time this year, René, or: A Young Man’s Adventures and Experiences (1783) found new readers in the communist era thanks to its critiques of feudalism, capitalism, and the Catholic Church. Dobrota Pucherová introduces us to this hybrid work, which mixes the bildungsroman with the philosophical novel, the romance, the adventure story, the travelogue, the history book, and the orientalist fantasy. more
