Connaissance et reve(rie) dans le discours des lumieres.

Abstract

My dissertation, "Connaissance et Reve(rie) dans le discours des Lumieres", is an exploration of eighteenth-century texts and the relation between literature and knowledge. As a means of exploring ways of knowing and literature I have chosen the "dream", not only as a literary, but also as a broader cultural phenomenon. How was it possible to think and write about dreams in relation to knowledge during a century viewed as dominated by rational thinking? How was it possible for the dream to become, in what is called the romantic movement, a higher means of knowledge and a literary genre? Guided by Michel Foucault's work on the change of episteme from the late eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the purpose of my research has been to observe and describe how dreaming was presented and represented in various dominant discourses of the second half of the eighteenth century. What meanings were given to the word? What content and what value was it ascribed to? How was it presented in various dominant discourses (theological, philosophical, medico-physiological)? How was it (re)presented in fiction? How did it indicate the emergence of new epistemologies and which ones? My study focuses on such texts as the lesser known works of French theologians (Dufresnoy and Richard), writings of the "philosophes" Condillac, Formey (Encyclopedie), La Mettrie, Cabanis and major works by Diderot (Bijoux indiscrets, De l'Interpretation de la nature, articles in the Encyclopedie, Salon of 1767, Elements de Physiologie and the Reve de D'Alembert) and by Rousseau (Morceau allegorique, the letters to Malesherbes and Les Reveries du promeneur solitaire). In examining these texts, I looked for signs that open new possibilities for writing about dreaming in relation to knowledge. In tracing the intricacies of such a concept in its diverse manifestations, the study of dream indicates areas of emergence of the new epistemologies and furthers our understanding of the Enlightenment and of the complex relations between literature and science.