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Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
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==Legacy== {{Unreferenced section|date=August 2024}} [[File:Fontenelle.jpg|thumb|250px|A portrait of Fontenelle by [[Nicolas de Largillière]]]] Fontenelle was a popular figure in the educated French society of his period, byholding a position of esteem comparable only to that of [[Voltaire]]. Unlike Voltaire, however, Fontenelle avoided making important enemies. He balanced his penchant for universal critical thought with liberal doses of flattery and praise to the appropriate individuals in aristocratic society. Fontenelle forms a link between two very widely different periods of French literature, that of [[Pierre Corneille|Corneille]], [[Jean Racine|Racine]] and [[Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux|Boileau]] on the one hand, and that of Voltaire, [[Jean le Rond d'Alembert|D'Alembert]] and [[Denis Diderot|Diderot]] on the other. It is not in virtue of his great age alone that this can be said of him; he actually had much in common with the ''beaux esprits'' of the 17th century, as well as with the ''philosophes'' of the 18th. But it is to the latter rather than to the former period that he properly belongs. According to [[Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve]], he deserves a place ''dans la classe des esprits infiniment distingués'' but is distinguished by being ought to be added by intelligence rather than by intellect and less by the power of saying much than by the power of saying a little well. There have been several collected editions of Fontenelle's works, the first being printed in 3 vols. at [[the Hague]] in 1728–1729. The best is that of Paris, in 8 vols., 1790. Some of his separate works have been frequently reprinted and also translated. The ''[[Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds|Pluralité des mondes]]'' was translated into [[Greek language|modern Greek]] in 1794. [[Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve|Sainte-Beuve]] has an interesting essay on Fontenelle, with several useful references, in the ''Causeries du lundi'', vol. iii. See also [[Abel-Francois Villemain|Villemain]], ''Tableau de la littérature française au XVIIIe siècle''; the abbé Trublet, ''Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de M. de Fontenelle'' (1759); A Laborde-Milaà, ''Fontenelle'' (1905), in the "''Grands écrivains français''" series; and L. Maigron, ''Fontenelle, l'homme, l'œuvre, l'influence'' (Paris, 1906). His ''[[:fr:Dialogue des morts (Fontenelle)|Dialogues of the dead]]'' show both his erudition and wit by presenting invented but plausible dialogues between dead ancients, dead moderns and a whole book devoted to dialogues between an ancient and a modern. To [[Montaigne]] asking him if some centuries had more wise men than other, [[Socrates]] answers sadly, "The general order of natures seems very constant". In one of the books [[Roxelane]] and [[Anne Boleyn]] discuss about politics and the way for a woman to decide a man to marry her. The dialogue between [[Moctezuma II|Montezuma]] and [[Hernán Cortés|Cortez]] allows the former to dismiss some myths about the wisdom in ancient Greece by quoting some counter-examples. In 1935, the [[lunar crater]] [[Fontenelle (crater)|Fontenelle]] was named after him.<ref>"[https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/1992 MOON - Fontenelle]", ''Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature''. International Astronomical Union, Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature.</ref>
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