Madame de La Carlière

Madame de La Carlière, sub-titled On the inconsequence of public judgement of our actions, is a fable written by the French writer Denis Diderot in 1772, and published for the first time in 1798.[1] It was published posthumously, as Diderot had died in 1784.

Preceded by This is not a fable and followed by Supplement to the Voyage of Bougaineville, it forms a triptych of moral fables written in 1772[2] that would appear in the Literary Correspondence in 1773.[3]

Madame de La Carlière takes its name from the mother of Sophie Volland, Élisabeth Françoise Brunel de La Carlière.[4]

In 1988, Madame de La Carlière was performed as a stage piece alongside Diderot's novel Rameau's Nephew at New York University, as part of a celebration commemorating the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.[5]

Bibliography

edit
  • Laffitte M., Diderot : hésitations autour de la promesse (Histoire de Madame de la Carlière). In : Revue romane (ISSN 0035-3906), 1992, vol. 27, n°1, p. 90-103.

Notes

edit
  1. ^ Œuvres complètes de Diderot éditées par Naigeon, Paris, Desray, 1798.
  2. ^ Diderot indicated the end of his revisions in a letter to Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm dated the 23 September 1772.
  3. ^ For more details on this triptych, we may read the introduction written for the article consecrated in the first volume, This is not a fable.
  4. ^ Raymond Trousson, Denis Diderot, Paris, Tallandier, 2005, p. 212.
  5. ^ Bernstein, Richard, "This Time, Bicentennial Is France's," The New York Times, 29 September 1988.