Les paradoxes d'un anti-philosophe. L'Éloge historique de Monseigneur le Duc de Bourgogne, par J.-J. Lefranc de Pompignan

Abstract

Olivier Ferret : The paradoxes of an enemy of the philosophes. J.-J. Lefranc de Pompignan's Éloge historique de Monseigneur le duc de Bourgogne. In his Éloge historique de Monseigneur le duc de Bourgogne (1761), Jean-Jacques Lefranc de Pompignan develops the paradigm of the traditional celebration of a great man's virtues. But it is a delicate exercise, as the dead man was only nine ; this creates a series of contradictions which make the work veer between the desired pathetic tone and involuntary ridicule. The paradoxe thus created can only be understood by taking into account Pompignan's polemical purpose ; for behind the portrait of the ideal sovereign that the Duke of Bourgogne could (and should) have been, the author of this work is constructing the exact antithesis of the 'so-called philosophes'. Thus the pamphlet-like style, by invading the conventional funereal oration, subverts its primary aim and becomes part of the attack launched in the second half of the 18th Century against the philosophes, presented as irreligious and seditious.