Diderot A Critical Biography PN Furbank 9780571243112 Books
Download As PDF : Diderot A Critical Biography PN Furbank 9780571243112 Books
Author of that inexhaustibly strange masterpiece Rameau's Nephew, Denis Diderot (1713-84) was also a dramatist, a speculative philosopher, the founder of modern art criticism and a tireless correspondent; he has also been called the most talkative man of his generation. His genius was profoundly subversive, and he spent much of his working life under the threat of exile. The son of a cutler, Diderot had an empathy with trades, tools and machinery that flowered magnificently in some of his contributions to the great Encyclopedie, which he edited with d'Alembert and published over a period of some twenty years. Diderot's range of contacts was prodigious a close friend of Rousseau, Grimm and d'Alembert, a familiar figure in the literary salons of Paris, he also met and corresponded with Hume, Garrick and Laurence Sterne. It was the support of Catherine the Great (as her agent, Diderot in effect laid the foundations of the Hermitage collection) that led to the most extraordinary episode in an astonishing life at the age of sixty Diderot travelled to St Petersburg where he drew up outline plans for the conversion of Russia into an ideal republic. P. N. Furbank's sympathetic and probing analysis of Diderot's work and influence was first published in 1992 and won a Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism.
Diderot A Critical Biography PN Furbank 9780571243112 Books
delivered as advertised.Product details
|
Tags : Diderot: A Critical Biography [P.N. Furbank] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Author of that inexhaustibly strange masterpiece Rameau's Nephew, Denis Diderot (1713-84) was also a dramatist,P.N. Furbank,Diderot: A Critical Biography,Faber and Faber,0571243118,Biography & Autobiography Personal Memoirs,Biography Autobiography,Biography: general,Personal Memoirs
People also read other books :
- First Songs Library with CD Singalong Books Roger Priddy 9781843329879 Books
- The Life and Times of Andrew Jackson Classic Reprint Thomas Edward Watson 9781333679071 Books
- Indomitus Est Book One Of The Fovean Chronicles Robert W Brady Jr 9780979367908 Books
- A Guest In My House David M Guddy Jr 9781681397511 Books
- INTERCOURSE edition by Jamise L Dames Literature Fiction eBooks
Diderot A Critical Biography PN Furbank 9780571243112 Books Reviews
OK biography that presents Diderot as the center of the group of philosophes that formed around the Encyclopedia project. But not much in the way of penetrating insight. I would have been satisfied with about half the 500 pages. His separate chapters of criticism on the many written works were in a totally different and jarring style that disrupted the flow of the bio. Some excellent photos that suggest Diderot as an intelligent and alert participant in an ongoing conversation.
Philip Nicholas Furbank is an English writer, scholar and critic, who has written biographies such as E. M. Forster A Life; his biography of Diderot won a Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was a French Enlightenment philosopher best known for his championing of the "Encyclopedia, or a systematic dictionary of the sciences, arts, and crafts." Furbank notes that "he could be clumsy in his dealings with public opinion," and that "He was eager to make converts, but not so much to atheism as to philosophy and reason."
Diderot's famous statement, "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest" is included, of course, with Furbank noting that "it was the benevolent Diderot who composed the phrase, in a festive New Year's Eve poem, nearly twenty years before the Revolution."
Furbank also observes that "It was no empty boast of Diderot's that he gave up half his existence to other people's concerns." He also writes, "In later years Diderot came to be known by the nickname of 'The Philosopher,'" although ultimately he had 'begun to fret at the role implied ... that is to say, a being made a sort of circus-turn or public monument of, a curiosity every visitor to Paris had to be shown."
This is an excellent and comprehensive biography of an important figure in philosophy (even though he, ironically, wrote no real "major" philosophic works).
We are in the midst of a Diderot boom, and this a good place to start. This is a great biography and should be back in print. Furbank writes beautifully and masterfully, and his choice of quotations and his summaries of Diderot's works are exemplary. Diderot's novels became fashionable again in the postmodern era, and his own political stance has also become the subject of renewed interest in discussions of the pre-French Revolutionary "pivot towards the republic". His writing on the Salons is everywhere in contemporary art criticism. Everything Diderot writes has this fascinating mix of deep committment and pervasive irony -- he is really one of the first modern people, for better or worse. And how much better Diderot comes off than virtually all of his contemporaries as a human being! It can only have been a pleasure to be in his company.
delivered as advertised.
0 Response to "[EUH]≫ Descargar Gratis Diderot A Critical Biography PN Furbank 9780571243112 Books"
Post a Comment