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De la lettre à la « Rêverie » : Diderot randonneur de l’esprit dans les Lettres à Sophie Volland

Odile Richard-Pauchet

Abstracts

From letter to ‘Rêverie’. Diderot’s mental excursions in the Letters to Sophie Volland
The few letters to Sophie Volland devoted to descriptions of gardens and accounts of walks are worth attention, particularly as they are similar to Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse or Rêveries du promeneur solitaire. Despite the two philosophers’ quarrel, we see here two sensibilities and even two techniques which are in fact very close. One, the heir of Stoic usage, consists in setting out in a letter the details of a life devoted to a discipline of rigour and meditation conducted, incidentally, in the open air. The other, more modern, aims at being impregnated by the landscape, to the extent of establishing xsthetic and sentimental ties between nature and mood ; it is even the basis of the autobiographical writing constituting the Rêveries. But, halfway between these poles which bring him closer to Rousseau, Diderot also shows us the basis of his writing in the letters to Sophie Volland. From the Promenade du sceptique onwards, we see his search for a form / function of thought reproducing — like a rather disorganised cross- country excursion — the particular itinerary of a poetical reflection progressing like a meandering interior conversation, more by association and branching than by syllogisms.

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References

Electronic reference

Odile Richard-Pauchet, “De la lettre à la « Rêverie » : Diderot randonneur de l’esprit dans les Lettres à Sophie VollandRecherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie [Online], 29 | 2000, Online since 02 April 2007, connection on 29 March 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rde/106; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/rde.106

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Odile Richard-Pauchet

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