Otis Fellows, pionnier des études sur Diderot

Abstract

John Pappas: Otis Fellows, Pioneer in Studies on Diderot. This article was originally published in English on the retirement of Otis Fellows from Columbia University in 1977. It is both a brief biography and an evaluation of his teaching and scholarly career, concluding with a detailed review of his Diderot, published the same year. It was felt that a French version might interest our European colleagues. After underlining the importance of his The Age of Enlightenment, (1941; 1971) for eighteenth-century studies in the U.S.A. to this day, the article considers Fellows' wartime service in liberated Paris and his contacts with French authors such as Sartre, Eluard, Jules Romains, etc. On his return to Columbia University he published the papers of one of his Diderot seminars as Diderot Studies (1949), leading to a series now in its 25th volume which did much to arouse interest in that then-neglected author. Following an evaluation of his research methodology as revealed in his publications and its influence on generations of students, the article concludes with a review of his Diderot as a lively, accurate evocation of the modernity and importance of this many-faceted author.