# Transcript

TONY LENTIN

At the heart of the French Enlightenment was the Encyclopaedia a huge collaborative enterprise compiled by Diderot and D’Alembert it included contributions from the great and enlightenment Philosoph’s Voltaire Rousseau and many others.

Published in France between 1751 and 1772 in twenty-eight volumes it was the greatest single undertaking of the enlightenment.

The main purpose of the Encyclopedia was to provide as much information as possible there were seventy-two thousand articles on a huge variety of topics.

The contributors believed that expansion of knowledge and understanding would lead to progress to the greater happiness of mankind and even it’s moral improvement.

But the Encyclopaedia had a second purpose it was highly controversial and subversive, almost every article questioned and criticised existing practices and values. It attacked the monarchy and the catholic church.

DR. GILES BARBER

The Encyclopaedia was produced with the royal privilege as all works published in eighteenth century France had to be and one of the conditions of privilege was of course that you submitted your manuscript or in actual practice normally your proofs to er one of the royal censors.

TONY LENTIN

The Philosophs were usually ingenious enough to get round the problem of censorship. They often used irony but the intelligent reader would understand and enjoy the joke.

Manuscript Take the article Adorey to Adore by Diderot, the article seems to be talking about Theology but the spirit of the treatment is very much tongue in cheek.

‘Adore this term in it’s literal and etymological sense means to carry to one’s mouth, to kiss one’s hand or to kiss something but with a feeling of reverence and awe in religious worship one adores God, one honours the saints, one reveres relics and images. In the secular form of worship one adores a mistress.‘

Such irreverence lead to the banning of the Encyclopaedia in 1759.

Despite the ban Diderot continued to publish, he pretended that the Encyclopaedia was being printed abroad in Neuf Chastel in Switzerland Neuf Chastel was outside French control and in the territory of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Frederick was a great champion of the enlightenment.

So the Encyclopaedia survived censorship but did it as the editors intended change people’s ways of thinking?

Voltaire thought not because of it’s sheer physical size “Twenty folio volumes will never make a revolution it’s the small portable books of thirty so that are dangerous. If the gospels had cost twelve hundred cestuses the Christian religion would never have been established.”

Voltaire created more accessible alternatives to the vast Encyclopaedia his own small philosophical dictionary was both witty and highly controversial it was also banned but this only increased it’s popularity.

Voltaire’s most popular work was ‘Candide’, the book shocked and amused a wide readership. It caused such a scandal that it went underground. Voltaire then denied having anything to do with it.

GILES BARBER

Here you see the very small pocket format. Something that could be slipped into your coat something, which was er illicit it could had to be hidden.

Sometimes the sheets were even sold separately and interleaved with say a religious work so that you could buy it this way. It was in small pocket form and very easy for hiding away. Sometimes you get even a books of this nature where it says on the spine that it is a prayer book.

TONY LENTIN

Whether on the grand scale of the Encyclopaedia or short volumes like Candide the writings of the French Philosoph’s challenged the established values of eighteenth century France and formed the basis of enlightenment thought.