Denis Diderot Libri

Un mélange irregolare di temi e registri narrativi animano la vivace conversazione tra Diderot e il geniale, spregiudicato nipote del celebre musicista; con la sua "duplice coscienza, di intellettale borghese e parassita", questi offre spunti all'autore per una ricerca sulla vera natura dei comportamenti sociali e per un'analisi impietosa del ruolo e delle possibilità dell'intellettuale contemporaneo.

First paperbound edition of 485 remarkable plates -- over 2,000 illustrations -- that accompanied landmark work of the Enlightenment. Royalty-free images depict agriculture, military science, metalwork, mining, textile manufacture, masonry, carpentry, more.

The 18th-century French philosopher Denis Diderot - author of idiosyncratic fictional works such as "Jacques the Fatalist" and "Rameau's Nephew" - is also considered by many to have been the first great art critic. This two-volume edition makes his art-critical texts available in English.

Jacques the Fatalist is a provocative exploration of the problems of human existence, destiny, and free will. In the introduction to this brilliant translation, David Coward explains the philosophical basis of Diderot's fascination with fate and examines the experimental and influential literary techniques that make Jacques the Fatalist a classic of the Enlightenment.

Diderot's The Nun (La Religieuse) is the seemingly true story of a young girl forced by her parents to enter a convent and take holy orders. A novel mingling mysticism, madness, sadistic cruelty and nascent sexuality, it gives a scathing insight into the effects of forced vocations and the unnatural life of the convent. A succès de scandale at the end of the eighteenth century, it has attracted and unsettled readers ever since. For Diderot's novel is not simply a story of a young girl with a bad habit; it is also a powerfully emblematic fable about oppression and intolerance.This new translation includes Diderot's all-important prefatory material, which he placed, disconcertingly, at the end of the novel, and which turns what otherwise seems like an exercise in realism into what is now regarded as a masterpiece of proto-modernist fiction.

Rameau’s Nephew is a fictional conversation written by Denis Diderot, one of the key figures of the French Enlightenment. Composed over many years and exploding onto the French literary scene when it was first released, in form and content it is unique in French literature. In a famous Parisian chess café, a down-and-out (“HIM”) accosts a former acquaintance (“ME”) who has more or less made good. They trade stories and satirise the society in which they move, one of extreme inequality, corruption, and envy, where mediocrity is allowed to flourish. They gossip about the circle of hangers-on in which the down-and-out abides and discuss the nature of genius, good and evil, chess, music, and art. And towards half past five, when the warning bell of the Opera sounds, they part, going their separate ways. The book fascinated Goethe, Hegel, Engels, and Freud in turn, achieving a literary-philosophical status that no other work by Diderot shares. This edition offers a brand new translation of Diderot’s famous dialogue.