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Benoît Melançon, «Annales Benjamin Constant. Vol. 14. Lausanne: Institut Benjamin Constant; Paris: Jean Touzot, 1993. Pp. 192», dans The Eighteenth Century. A Current Bibliography. n.s. 19 — for 1993. Part II. Sections V-VI, New York, AMS Press, 2003, p. VI : 388-389.
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The fourteenth issue of the Annales Benjamin Constant is divided into four sections:
The first features three articles on “Benjamin Constant et le groupe de Coppet.” To describe the friendship between Charles-Victor de Bonstetten and the Swiss historian and diplomat Jean de Müller, Peter Walser-Wilhelm relies mainly on their correspondence as first edited by Friederike Brun. Claire Jaquier compares two epistolary novels often published together, Samuel de Constant’s Le mari sentimental (1783) and Isabelle de Charrière’s Lettres de Mistriss Henley (1784), with regard to their representation of marriage, and its shift from the public to the private sphere. Jean-Pierre Perchellet studies Benjamin Constant’s Wallstein (1807) within the context of his autobiographical writings, and shows the role that that tragedy—adapted from Schiller’s trilogy—played between Amélie et Germaine and Adolphe, on the one hand, and Cécile, on the other.
The second section of the Annales consists of the six papers given at the conference “L’Encyclopédie d’Yverdon. Bilan et perspectives” (October 26-27, 1992). The purpose of that conference was to determine what had been written on the Swiss Encyclopédie (1770-1780)—its history, the content of its 58 quarto volumes, its ideology, its personnel of 33 collaborators— and what remained to be done. After a general introduction by Étienne Hofmann, Giulietta Pejrone presents the biography of that Encyclopédie’s editor, Fortunato Bartolomeo De Felice (1723-1789), and a survey of his works, while Jean-Daniel Candaux researches four “sociétés de pensée” established from 1760 to 1790 in the Vaud canton, Switzerland, in order to better understand the values shared by their members and the Encyclopédie’s writers. Clorinda Donato argues for an analysis that would stress the specific nature of what she calls the “Lumières protestantes,” and thus expose the real merits of the Yverdon Dictionnaire universel raisonné des connaissances humaines, through a systematic comparison with the Parisian Encyclopédie of Diderot and D’Alembert (1751-1772). Inspired by Hans Robert Jauss’ Rezeptionsästhetik, Alain Cernuschi scrutinizes Frédéric Samuel Ostervald’s thirty reviews of, or extracts from, the Yverdon Encyclopédie published by the Journal helvétique from November 1770 until June 1775, and then reconstructs the ideal encyclopedia revealed by Ostervald’s writings. Jacques Proust situates the Parisian Encyclopédie in the context of European intellectual history; he differentiates Diderot and D’Alembert’s project from that of their predecessors world-wide, showing both its strengths and weaknesses. This sweeping synthesis ought to serve as a general introduction to that Encyclopédie.
The third section, entitled “Œuvres complètes de Benjamin Constant,” contains contributions by Paul Delbouille and Laura Saggiorato. Upon the publication of their first two volumes (out of a possible fifty), Delbouille recalls the history of the Œuvres complètes, and summarizes their principles. Saggiorato unfolds the numerous difficulties she faced in editing Constant’s translation-adaptation of Godwin’s An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793 and 1796).
The fourth section of the Annales is made up of thirteen book reviews (on Constant, madame Récamier, madame de Staël, Charles de Villers, Sismondi, the Encyclopédie, Bonstetten, madame de Charrière), additions to Constant’s bibliography and chronology, and news from the Association Benjamin Constant and the Institut Benjamin Constant in Lausanne. A portrait of the late Alison Fairlie completes this well-documented issue of the Annales.
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