Emilie Du Châtelet

rewriting Enlightenment philosophy and science

Volume: 2006:01

Series: SVEC

Volume Editors: Judith P. Zinsser and Julie Candler Hayes

Series Collaborators: W. H. Barber; Gérard G. Emch, University of Florida; Antoinette Emch-Dériaz, University of Florida; Jean-François Gauvin, Harvard University; Julie Candler Hayes, University of Richmond; Marie-Thérèse Inguenaud, UFR Sciences des textes et documents, Université de Paris VII; John R. Iverson, Whitman College; Nanette LeCoat, Trinity University; J. Patrick Lee, Barry University; Adrienne Mason, University of the West of England; Paul Veatch Moriarty, Longwood University; Renaud Redien-Collot, Advancia, L’Ecole des entrepreneurs de Paris and Fondation E. Roosevelt; Remy G. Saisselin, University of Rochester and Hobart-William Smith College; Bertram Eugene Schwarzbach; Barbara Whitebread, DePauw University; Judith P. Zinsser, Miami University.<br>

Publication Date: 2006

Pages: 345

ISBN: 978-0-7294-0872-1

Price: £70

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About

Until recently, the marquise Du Châtelet (1706-1749) was more remembered as the companion of Voltaire than as an intellectual in her own right. While much has been written about his extraordinary output during the years he spent in her company, her own work has often been overshadowed. This volume brings renewed attention to Du Châtelet’s intellectual achievements, including her free translation of selections from Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the bees; her dissertation on the nature and propagation of fire for the 1738 prize competition of the Académie des sciences; the 1740 Institutions de physique and ensuing exchange with the perpetual secretary of the Académie, Dortous de Mairan; her two-volume exegesis of the Bible; the translation of and commentary on Isaac Newton’s Principia; and her semi-autobiographical Discours sur le bonheur. It is a measure of the breadth of her interests that the contributions to this volume come from experts in a wide range of disciplines: comparative literature, art history, the history of mathematics and science, philosophy, the history of publishing and translation studies. Du Châtelet’s partnership with Voltaire is reflected in a number of the essays; they borrowed from each other’s writings, from the discussions they had together, and from their shared readings. Essays examine representations of her by her contemporaries and posterity that range from her inclusion in a German portrait gallery of learned men and women, to the scathing portrait in Françoise de Graffigny’s correspondence, and nineteenth-century accounts coloured by conflicted views of the ancien régime. Other essays offer close readings of her work, and set her activities and writings in their intellectual and social contexts. Finally, they speculate on the ways in which she presented herself and what that might tell us about the challenges and possibilities facing an exceptional woman of rank and privilege in eighteenth-century society.
List of illustrations
Introduction: a scholarly conversation, 1967-2006
Judith P. Zinsser and Julie Candler Hayes, Rereading W. H. Barber
W. H. Barber, Mme Du Châtelet and Leibnizianism: the genesis of the Institutions de physique
Judith P. Zinsser and Julie Candler Hayes, The marquise as philosophe
I. Contemporary portraits
John R. Iverson, A female member of the Republic of Letters: Du Châtelet’s portrait in Bilder-Sal […] berümhter Schrifftsteller
Marie-Thérèse Inguenaud, La Grosse et le Monstre: histoire d’une haine
Rémy G. Saisselin, Portraiture and the ambiguity of being
II. Contributions to the Republic of Letters
J. Patrick Lee, Le Recueil de poésies: manuscrit de Mme Du Châtelet
Adrienne Mason, ‘L’air du climat et le goût du terroir’: translation as cultural capital in the writings of Mme Du Châtelet
Bertram Eugene Schwarzbach, Mme Du Châtelet’s Examens de la Bible and Voltaire’s La Bible enfin expliquée
François Gauvin, Le cabinet de physique du château de Cirey et la philosophie naturelle de Mme Du Châtelet et de Voltaire
Paul Veatch Moriarty, The principle of sufficient reason in Du Châtelet’s Institutions
Antoinette Emch-Dériaz and Gérard G. Emch, On Newton’s French translator: how faithful was Mme Du Châtelet?
III. Self-portraiture
Barbara Whitehead, The singularity of Mme Du Châtelet: an analysis of the Discours sur le bonheur
Renaud Redien-Collot, Emilie Du Châtelet et les femmes: entre l’attitude prométhéenne et la pleine assomption du statut de minoritaire
Nanette LeCoat, ‘Le génie de la sécheresse’: Mme Du Châtelet in the eyes of her Second Empire critics
Summaries
Bibliography
Index

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