Editing Denis Diderot (section)

== Mature works ==
Although the ''Encyclopédie'' was Diderot's most monumental product, he was the author of many other works that sowed nearly every intellectual field with new and creative ideas.<ref name="EB1911"/> Diderot's writing ranges from a graceful trifle like the ''Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre'' (''Regrets for my Old Dressing Gown'') up to the heady ''[[D'Alembert's Dream]]'' (''Le Rêve de d'Alembert'') (composed 1769), a philosophical dialogue in which he plunges into the depths of the controversy as to the ultimate constitution of [[matter]] and the [[Meaning of life (philosophy)|meaning of life]].<ref name="EB1911"/> ''[[Jacques le fataliste]]'' (written between 1765 and 1780, but not published until 1792 in German and 1796 in French) is similar to ''[[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman|Tristram Shandy]]'' and ''The Sentimental Journey'' in its challenge to the conventional novel's structure and content.<ref>Jacques Smietanski, ''Le Réalisme dans Jacques le Fataliste'' (Paris: Nizet, 1965); Will McMorran, ''The Inn and the Traveller: Digressive Topographies in the Early Modern European Novel'' (Oxford: Legenda, 2002).</ref>

===''La Religieuse'' (''The Nun'' or ''Memoirs of a Nun'')===
''[[La Religieuse (novel)|La Religieuse]]'' was a novel that claimed to show the corruption of the Catholic Church's institutions.

====Plot====
The novel began not as a work for literary consumption, but as an elaborate practical joke aimed at luring the [[Marc-Antoine-Nicolas de Croismare|Marquis de Croismare]], a companion of Diderot's, back to Paris. ''The Nun'' is set in the 18th century, that is, contemporary France. Suzanne Simonin is an intelligent and sensitive sixteen-year-old French girl who is forced against her will into a Catholic convent by her parents. Suzanne's parents initially inform her that she is being sent to the convent for financial reasons. However, while in the convent, she learns that she is actually there because she is an illegitimate child, as her mother committed adultery. By sending Suzanne to the convent, her mother thought she could make amends for her sins by using her daughter as a sacrificial offering.

At the convent, Suzanne suffers humiliation, harassment and violence because she refuses to make the vows of the religious community. She eventually finds companionship with the Mother Superior, Sister de Moni, who pities Suzanne's anguish. After Sister de Moni's death, the new Mother Superior, Sister Sainte-Christine, does not share the same empathy for Suzanne that her predecessor had, blaming Suzanne for the death of Sister de Moni. Suzanne is physically and mentally harassed by Sister Sainte-Christine, almost to the point of death.

Suzanne contacts her lawyer, Monsieur Manouri, who attempts to legally free her from her vows. Manouri manages to have Suzanne transferred to another convent, Sainte-Eutrope. At the new convent, the Mother Superior is revealed to be a lesbian, and she grows affectionate towards Suzanne. The Mother Superior attempts to seduce Suzanne, but her innocence and chastity eventually drives the Mother Superior to insanity, leading to her death.

Suzanne escapes the Sainte-Eutrope convent using the help of a priest. Following her liberation, she lives in fear of being captured and taken back to the convent as she awaits the help from Diderot's friend the [[Marc-Antoine-Nicolas de Croismare|Marquis de Croismare]].

====Analysis====
Diderot's novel was not aimed at condemning  Christianity as such but at criticizing cloistered religious life.<ref name="Andrew S. Curran 2019, p. 275"/> In Diderot's telling, some critics have claimed,{{Who|date=October 2024}} the Church is depicted as fostering a hierarchical society, exemplified in the power dynamic between the Mother Superior and the girls in the convent, forced as they are against their will to take the vows and endure what is to them the intolerable life of the convent. On this view, the subjection of the unwilling young women to convent life dehumanized them by repressing their sexuality. Moreover, their plight would have been all the more oppressive since it should be remembered that in France at this period, religious vows were recognized, regulated and enforced not only by the Church but also by the civil authorities. Some broaden their interpretation to suggest that Diderot was out to expose more general victimization of women by the Catholic Church, that forced them to accept the fate imposed upon them by a hierarchical society.{{Citation needed|date=October 2024}}

====Posthumous publication====
Although ''The Nun'' was completed in about 1780, the work was not published until 1796, after Diderot's death.

===''Rameau's Nephew''===
The dialogue ''[[Rameau's Nephew]]'' (French: ''Le Neveu de Rameau'') is a "farce-tragedy" reminiscent of the ''Satires'' of [[Horace]], a favorite classical author of Diderot's whose lines "Vertumnis, quotquot sunt, natus iniquis" ("Born under (the influence of) the unfavorable (gods) Vertumnuses, however many they are") appear as epigraph. According to Nicholas Cronk, ''Rameau's Nephew'' is "arguably the greatest work of the French Enlightenment's greatest writer."<ref name=":1">Nicholas Cronk, "Introduction", in ''Rameau's Nephew and First Satire'', Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006 (pp. vii–xxv), p. vii.</ref>

[[File:Un dîner de philosophes.Jean Huber.jpg|thumb|300px|''Le Dîner des philosophes'' painted by [[Jean Huber]]. Denis Diderot is the second from the right (seated).]]

====Synopsis====
The narrator in the book recounts a conversation with {{ill|Jean-François Rameau|fr|Jean-François Rameau|lt=Jean-François Rameau,}} nephew of the famous composer [[Jean-Philippe Rameau]]. The nephew composes and teaches music with some success but feels disadvantaged by his name and is jealous of his uncle. Eventually he sinks into an indolent and debauched state. After his wife's death, he loses all self-esteem and his brusque manners result in him being ostracized by former friends. A character profile of the nephew is now sketched by Diderot: a man who was once wealthy and comfortable with a pretty wife, who is now living in poverty and decadence, shunned by his friends. And yet this man retains enough of his past to analyze his despondency philosophically and maintains his sense of humor. Essentially he believes in nothing—not in religion, nor in morality; nor in the  Roussean view about nature being better than civilization since in his opinion every species in nature consumes one another.<ref name=AoV />{{rp|660}} He views the same process at work in the economic world where men consume each other through the legal system.<ref name=AoV />{{rp|660–661}} The wise man, according to the nephew, will consequently practice hedonism:

{{Blockquote|Hurrah for wisdom and philosophy!—the wisdom of Solomon: to drink good wines, gorge on choice foods, tumble pretty women, sleep on downy beds; outside of that, all is vanity.<ref name=AoV />{{rp|661}}}}

The dialogue ends with Diderot calling the nephew a wastrel, a coward, and a glutton devoid of spiritual values to which the nephew replies: "I believe you are right."<ref name=AoV />{{rp|661}}

====Analysis====
Diderot's intention in writing the dialogue—whether as a satire on contemporary manners, a reduction of the theory of [[Individualism|self-interest]] to an absurdity, the application of [[irony]] to the ethics of ordinary convention, a mere setting for a discussion about music, or a vigorous dramatic sketch of a parasite and a human original—is disputed. In political terms it explores "the bipolarisation of the social classes under absolute monarchy," and insofar as its protagonist demonstrates how the servant often manipulates the master, ''[[Le Neveu de Rameau]]'' can be seen to anticipate Hegel's [[master–slave dialectic]].<ref>Jean Varloot, "Préface", in: Jean Varloot, ed. ''Le Neveu de Rameau et autres dialogues philosophiques'', Paris: Gallimard, 1972 pp. 9–28, pp. 25–26.</ref>

====Posthumous publication====
The publication history of the ''Nephew'' is circuitous. Written between 1761 and 1774, Diderot never saw the work through to publication during his lifetime, and apparently did not even share it with his friends. After Diderot's death, a copy of the text reached [[Friedrich Schiller|Schiller]], who gave it to [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]], who, in 1805, translated the work into German.{{sfn|Morley|1911}} Goethe's translation entered France, and was retranslated into French in 1821. Another copy of the text was published in 1823, but it had been expurgated by Diderot's daughter prior to publication. The original manuscript was only found in 1891.<ref name=AoV />{{rp|659}}