Pierre-Daniel Huet Research Articles

The Motif of Arboreal Metamorphosis in the Neo-Latin Pastoral. The Case Study of Jacopo Sannazaro’s Salices and Pierre-Daniel Huet’s Vitis

The aim of this article is to analyse two examples of the motif of arboreal metamorphosis in the Neo-Latin bucolic, present in the poems by Jacopo Sannazaro (Salices) and Pierre-Daniel Huet (Vitis). In Salices, nymphs fleeing from the deities are transformed into willows, repeting the fate of Ovid’s Daphne, Syrinx and the Heliades. In Vitis the poet creates a story about a nymph, named Vitis, on the basis of the love story of the satyr Ampelos and Dionysus. For betraying Bacchus, she is turned into a vine and her lover Ulmus into an elm. Their fate is similar to Ovid’s Myrrha and Philemon and Baucis. In the history of Vitis, particularly in the description of the lovers’ metamorphosis, one can see borrowings from Sannazaro. Both bucolic poems are linked by the ambiguity of the ontological status of the newly created plants. They differ in their moral interpretation of metamorphosis. The turning of the nymphs into trees can be understood as some kind of punishment for the rape that had been committed on them. On the other hand, Vitis, who committed treachery, is in fact rewarded and by the will of Jupiter she remains united with her lover forever.

The Formation of the Novel: Literature Vs. Theory of Literature

The article deals with the problems of novel theory formation and the preface as a special form of genre theorizing. The purpose of the study is to problematize the discursive repertoire of novel theory in the stage of formation. The novel as a genre, that remained beyond the subject of poetics for a long time, was theorized in the rhetorical tradition, not only in scholarly treatises, but also in prefaces explaining what a novel is, how and by what laws it is arranged, what history it has and what examples it follows. It can be said that novel theory in its genesis ripened close to the literary text, without breaking the umbilical cord common with it. And even when framed in the form of a separate essay, it had appeared next to or along with the novel. “Treatise on the Origin of Novels, or Romances” / “Traité de l’origine des Romans” (1670) P.-D. Huet / Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630–1721), that regulated the theory and history of the genre and determined the algorithms of its research until the end of the 19th century, treatise was originally published as a scholarly preface in a letter form to the friend and author of the novel “Zaida. Spanish Story”: “Letter from Monsieur Huet to Monsieur de Segrais. On the Origin of Novels”/ “Lettre de Monsieur Huet, à Monsieur de Segrais. De l’origin des romans”. So Huet created not only the novel theory, but also a new locus of theory, widely used in European and Russian literature during the formation of the national novel.

Topographie boréale et topologie boréaliste chez Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721)

Pierre-Daniel Huet’s (1630-1721) journey to Sweden in 1652 offered him the opportunity to observe the customs and habits of the peoples of the Far North. The young scholar’s zest for geographic discovery and his topographic surveys of places mingled with ancient borealist topoi, with which he had become familiar early on through his readings of Greek and Latin authors. This article shows how Huet’s borealist topoi, especially on the influence of climate on people’s credulity, carry more weight in his writings than his description of places and his knowledge of physics. They feed his disparaging views on the Swedes from whom he suffered much hardship during his stay at the court of Queen Christina.

The Early Modern Lyric: A Literary Wilderness of World Literature

This article explores several aspects of the early modern poetic tradition as an antidote to presentism in comparative and world literature studies. A passage from Giovanni Battista Pigna’s Renaissance synthesis of Aristotelian and Horatian poetics is used to comment on comparative readings in general. This is followed by close readings of two dream poems by the early modern Italian Giovanni Aurelio Augurello and the modernist Spanish poet Antonio Machado, both of which relate to Renaissance literary traditions in different ways. Two different agonistic poems, one by Pierre-Daniel Huet and one attributed to a Frisian folk hero, are also subject to analysis in order to explore how the process of historical selection reshapes the literary corpus and subjugates certain types of writing to neglect.

Ancient Theology and New Philosophies: Pierre-Daniel Huet against Descartes and Spinoza

This article analyses Pierre-Daniel Huet’s reaction to the doctrines that he believed to favour atheism, Deism, and, generally, irreligion. Descartes and Spinoza, in particular, are guilty, according to Huet, of placing excessive confidence in the discerning power of reason and in the type of certitude it produces, which is incomparable to revealed truth and in no way superior to moral certitude that arises from authority and historical erudition. Huet counters Cartesian philosophy with sceptical fideism and opposes Spinozian exegesis by means of an innovative, although perhaps untimely, adaptation of the doctrine of ancient theology. Against the ‘atheist’ Spinoza and the cohort of deist thinkers, Huet intends to demonstrate that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch and the divulger of God’s message to all peoples, in all times, and that, as a consequence, deist ‘natural religion’ is a partially corrupted version of the Mosaic doctrine.

Montesquieu e la storia del commercio nel mondo antico

In the XXI book of the Esprit des lois, Montesquieu proposed an articulated reconstruction of the main events that marked the history of commerce in the ancient world, making conclusions in explicit contrast to those of his compatriot Pierre-Daniel Huet, who in 1716 had published a treatise titled Histoire du commerce et de la navigation. In particular, Montesquieu tried to argue, in clear disagreement with Huet, that the total incompetence of the Romans in the art of commerce, which lasted from the Republican period to the Imperial epoch, led them to the establishment of extremely negative monetary and customs policies. He opined that this damaged the prosperity of the ancient world irreparably, and thus, aggravated the ruinous decline of the population that was caused by the destructive wars of conquest and by the subsequent “despotism” to which the enslaved peoples were subjected. Then, in the following centuries, the spread of Christianity led to the radication of the primacy of spiritual values, thereby bringing about the growth of a large clergy which contributed in a decisive manner to hindering the realisation of an effective and consistent demographic recovery. Instead, David Hume firmly refused the idea that the ancient world, even before Roman dominion, could be considered more populated than the modern world, dedicating to this matter the essay Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations (1752).

Friendship and Rivalry in Science and Scholarship: Pierre-Daniel Huet and the Académies de Caen

An informed engagement in a wide variety of advanced intellectual pursuits was entirely normal in the early modern period; less predictable, though, were the crucial dynamics of interpersonal relationships. Uniquely in seventeenth-century France, Caen saw the foundation of two separate learned societies, the principal Académie de Caen and the smaller but distinct Académie de physique. The latter was also unique: inspired by the Royal Society of London and founded well before the Parisian Académie des sciences, it gained royal recognition and finance in 1668 before failing soon after 1672. In this essay, these remarkable events are reconsidered in the light of the individuals involved, especially the dominant personality of the strong-minded polymath Pierre-Daniel Huet, and their relationships. Based on primary documents that have been unstudied or misinterpreted, it serves as a case-study of the complex ways in which intellectual life in France operated in practice during the later seventeenth century.

«Je veux être libre, je veux suivre mes propres sentimens»: Pierre-Daniel Huet e il Traité philosophique de la foiblesse de l’esprit humain

This article aims at contributing to the intense and continuing debate on Pierre-Daniel Huet’s scepticism as expressed in his posthumous Traité philosophique de la foiblesse de l’esprit humain, the most controversial and at the same time original work of his scholarly production. A recovery of the archetypal schema used by Huet for the production of this work, an examination of the manuscripts preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and a new consideration of the intellectual bibliography of the author clear the path to a new consideration on the nature of this particular work and on Huet’s adhesion to scepticism. The particular preference of Huet for his Traité can be better explained through the, in this work often invoked, liberté philosophique.

Huet's interpretation of the Essays of Montaigne

Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630–1721), known today only by experts, was one of the main intellectuals of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. A distinguished Latinist who also knew Greek, ...

Splendeurs de la médiocrité, une idée du roman (review)

Reviewed by: Splendeurs de la médiocrité, une idée du roman Allan Curnew Thorel-Cailleteau, Sylvie. Splendeurs de la médiocrité, une idée du roman. Geneva: Droz, 2008. Pp. 256. ISBN 978-2-600-01183-9 As Sylvie Thorel-Cailleteau clearly states in the preface to Splendeurs de la médiocrité, her aim in this study is to shed new light on the novelistic genre. This she sets out to do by drawing from two of her previous works, La Tentation du livre sur rien (Éditions InterUniversitaires 1993) and La Pertinence réaliste. Zola, (Champion 2000) in which she concludes that the goal of Naturalism is to reveal the beauty in the most common of subjects through the portrayal of relevant yet very mediocre heroes. The work under review here traces the history of the novel from Heliodorus’ Aethiopica to the later writings of Samuel Beckett. Its specific objective is to show that it is, indeed, the profane and mediocre which characterize the novel, setting its prose apart from the sacred and noble poetry of verse. In her introduction, Thorel-Cailleteau draws inspiration from the Traité de l’origine des romans (1670) in which Pierre-Daniel Huet finds the origins of the novelistic genre in the fourth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses where the sacred is rejected in favour of the ordinary. Of particular interest is also the familiar, conversational tone implied in the recounting of the various tales by the weaving daughters of Minyas, an orality which wanes as the novel evolves. In the telling of a tale, there is the expectation that the story will be retold and live on; it will be woven and forever sung, just as any work written in verse. In the prose of the novel, by contrast, no such divine infinity can be attained; it is the human finite which rules the genre. Neither uttering nor hearing the voice of the gods, the novelist must draw his inspiration from his own imperfection and from that of his surroundings. The resulting work bears a void of sorts which the reader, himself alone and imperfect, must work to fill. The author opens the first chapter of her book by disputing the notion that the novel cannot be defined. Using illustrations from classical times to the 17th century, she finds support for Huet’s definition of the genre: a novel is a profane narrative written in prose. It is fictional, yet plausible, and has as its subject the interiority of man in his terrestrial existence. The poetry of the novel is that of mediocrity understood according to the Greek notion of the term: the intermediary, both in subject and style, between two extremes, the superior and the inferior. In contrast to the hero of the epic poem, the central character of the novel is less historical and more human. Thus, it is his/her interiority, rather than external factors, which is of prime importance. This Thorel-Cailleteau illustrates through a brief look at La Princesse de Clèves in which history and politics are relegated to the background in favour of intimate relations. In the first section of chapter 2, Thorel-Cailleteau endeavours to establish that Plato [End Page 184] is, as Huet suggested, the philosopher of lovers and of the novel itself. While not ordinary human beings, for example, the main characters of the Aethiopica and of Cupid and Psyche are still very much caught up in the human experience and are, thus, intermediaries between mankind and the gods. Likewise, the novel itself, being fiction written in prose, is an intermediary between truth and falsehood. We also see in the aforementioned works that the love of another human being leads to the love of beauty and of the divine. From there, however, stems the desire to want to conceal what is base in human nature, a desire particularly evident in works of the 17th century. Thorel-Cailleteau demonstrates through her studies of La Princesse de Clèves and Dom Carlos that the secret (which cannot be kept secret) is at the heart of the 17th century novel. Here interiority is revealed in silence and through the slightest of gestures, rather than...

History, Empire, and the Novel: Pierre-Daniel Huet and the Origins of the Romance

History, Empire, and the Novel: Pierre-Daniel Huet and the Origins of the Romance

Seria Huet o modelo do abade filosófico da nota B do verbete Pirro?

O texto de Bayle mais frequentemente citado como contendo o seu ceticismo mais radical é a nota B do artigo Pirro do Dicionário Histórico e Crítico. A filosofia cética presente nesta nota é dramaticamente apresentada por um abade católico em diálogo com outro abade. O artigo reúne considerações históricas, biográficas, bibliográficas e filosóficas que dão plausibilidade à hipótese que Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721) foi o modelo histórico do personagem bayleano. Estas considerações contribuem para esclarecer a questão, bastante controversa, da natureza e escopo do ceticismo da nota B do artigo Pyrrho.

Book Review: April G. Shelford, Transforming the Republic of Letters: Pierre-Daniel Huet and European Intellectual Life, 1650-1720, ser. Changing Perspectives on Early Modern Europe (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007), XII + 264 pp.

Book Review: April G. Shelford, Transforming the Republic of Letters: Pierre-Daniel Huet and European Intellectual Life, 1650-1720, ser. Changing Perspectives on Early Modern Europe (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007), XII + 264 pp.

Renaissance Historiography and Novel Anthropology in Pierre-Daniel Huet’s «De l’Origine des romans» (1660)

Scholars have long recognized Pierre-Daniel Huet’s (1630-1721) Traite de l’Origine des romans (1670) as a defensive piece in a polemic about the novel that preoccupied French moralists, salonnieres, and academicians throughout the seventeenth century. Jean-Pierre Camus (1582-1652), the bishop of Bellay who confirmed Huet in 1638, singled out «cet horrible pile d’Amadis» hailing from France’s rival across the Pyrenees, as «la Mere source, et comme le cheval de Troye de tous les romans». The ma...

Of Sceptres and Censors: Biblical Interpretation and Censorship in Seventeenth-Century France

In 1676 Pierre-Daniel Huet, scholar and tutor to the Dauphin, encountered difficulties with state censorship. Bishop Bossuet was blocking the publication of his Demonstratio evangelica, a recasting of an ancient Christian apologetic. The Sorbonne theologian and censor, Edme Pirot, was caught in the middle. An analysis of the interaction between these three men reveals Ancien Régime censorship as a series of negotiations shaped by the different stakes, personalities, ambitions and status of the participants. Huet and Bossuet’s quarrel also echoed the confessional debates of the sixteenth century and reflected disagreements within the Catholic Church thereafter. It raised such important questions as whether the Bible should be subjected to the same types of analysis as secular texts and anticipated concerns about the relationship between biblical criticism and the rise of irreligion. Throughout, Bossuet skilfully manipulated the mechanisms of state censorship to defend his vision of Church Tradition by delaying the publication of Huet’s Demonstratio and suppressing Richard Simon’s L’histoire critique du Vieux Testament.

Radical Cartesianism: The French Reception of Descartes (review)

More than fifty years ago Richard H. Popkin urged historians of philosophy to work on secondary figures in philosophy, in part for their own sake, but also because the true shape of philosophy and the development of major figures can be understood only through examination of the intellectual milieu out of which they arose. Among others he specifically mentioned Robert Desgabets, Jean Du Hamel, Simon Foucher, Pierre-Daniel Huet, Pierre-Sylvain Regis, and Henricus Regius. Now in Radical Cartesianism, Tad Schmaltz has provided a masterful and erudite study of these and other philosophers who are minor now but were major in their day. The importance of this study is not just that it illuminates the metaphysics of Descartes, Spinoza, and Malebranche, and clarifies the relationship of these philosophers to Arnauld, Jansenism, Plato, and the Aristotelian scholasticism of the day, but also that it opens to view an intricate and significant body of thought. The radical Cartesianism Schmaltz examines addresses and provides solutions to problems of the relationship between mind and body, between man and God, and between ideas and the external world that continue to engage philosophers today. Schmaltz concludes his study with the suggestion that these philosophers might have had more latter-day influence if larger historical events, in particular the death of Louis XIV and the subsequent relaxation of attacks on Jansenism (and on supposed Jansenist Cartesianism) had not led to interest in matters other than the Eucharist and the nature of the soul that were major issues among the radical Cartesians and their opponents.

True believers: the recption of Descartes's meditations by Malebranche and Huet

Both Nicholas Malebranche and Pierre-Daniel Huet were at first positively influenced by Descartes's Meditations, and both came to perceive shortcomings in that work. With respect to mind-body dualism, Malebranche attempted to strengthen Descartes's position by jettisoning clarity and distinctness basing it instead on a principle of intentionality. Huet jettisoned the whole position in favor of skepticism. The source of their different responses lay in their different estimations of Descartes's integrity.

Thinking Geometrically in Pierre-Daniel Huet's Demonstratio evangelica (1679)

Sometime after 1679, Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721) indulged an author's vanity by comparing his Demonstratio evangelica with works whose authors are far better known today. He recorded his judgments on a scrap of paper.1 First, he contrasted Demonstratio Antoine Arnauld's Les nouveaux elemens de geometrie (1664). While Arnauld had assumed that all principles of geometry were true and all geometrical demonstrations certain, and had considered religious questions not amenable methodical demonstration, Huet noted, made clear contrary by proving religion through a methodical sequence of propositions similar those one finds in geometry. For Arnauld religious belief fell into class of things better proven through a series of mutually reinforcing propositions than through proofs modeled on geometry; Huet had actually accomplished latter. Arnauld did not require geometric proofs in religious works; Huet wrote Demonstratio to satisfy those who do. Indeed, Arnauld forbade such proofs, I permitted them ... and I proposed something satisfy those who do [demand them]. Huet then considered Blaise Pascal's Pensees (1670). Pascal had also rejected demonstration in proving religious truths, Huet noted, opting instead for moral proofs, which are directed more heart than mind. In other words he desired work harder at moving and disposing heart than at convincing and persuading intellect. Apparently, M. Pascal did not believe that one could prove truth of Christian religion by geometric proofs; much less that he had any hope of doing so. Huet's jottings precisely situate Demonstratio evangelica (1679) between claims of Cartesian rationalism and Pascal's fideism and religion of heart, inviting us take another look at an imperfectly understood work. Scholarly treatment of Demonstratio has generally been cursory or partial because it has been considered less for its own merits than for how it fits into larger research agendas.2 Some scholars have offered important insights but either do not develop them or do not consider Demonstratio in a sufficiently broad context.3 A consensus on Demonstratio's general thrust thus masks puzzling questions. Everyone acknowledges, for example, that Huet's apologetic responded Baruch Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670). Like other Christian apologists, he had maintain the Mosaic authorship that was the supposed guarantee of truth of text,4 devoting long chapters authenticity of books of Old Testament.5 Yet Huet began Demonstratio with an assault on geometrical knowledge and an epistemological discussion-an odd place begin refuting Tractatus.6 Why? The question deserves a good answer, as Huet was a scholar of international reputation, and his contemporaries judged Demonstratio an important work.7 More important for us, evolution of Demonstratio superbly reflects a vanished intellectual world and scholarly culture and in fact records change in that world over four decades. Its genesis was rash promise of a young man inspired by possibilities of geometry and aspiring recognition in Republic of Letters, but before fulfilling that promise Huet developed a lively interest in such diverse fields as biblical criticism and natural philosophy, and he would apply insights gained there in his apologetic. …

Bernard Lamy (1640-1715), étude biographique et bibliographique (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 279 Epicureanlsm, Stoicism, Hermetism, Copernicanism, and sheer fantasy. "Heretic" was obviously a mild term for this belligerent prophet, sage, and magus. HF.aBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, California Bernard Lamy (1640-1715), dtude biographique et bibliographique. Textes in~dits. By Francois Girbal. Vol. II of the series Lemouvement des idges au XVII ~ 8i$cle, Collection dirig~e par Andr~ Robinet. (Paris: 1964. Pp. 194. NF 12.) The Reverend Father, Bernard Lamy, of the Oratory, one of the minor figures of the late seventeenth century who played an important role in the diffusion of Cartesianism and Malebranchism, is hardly known or studied today (and if he is, he is usually confused with, or identified with, his namesake, Dom Franqois Lami, the Benedictine). Dr. Girbal's short biography, based on a great deal of new archival research, gives us a picture of Lamy's career and influence. This work, though very episodic and discontinuous, except chronologically, presents the essential facts of Lamy's activities as a teacher and writer; he set forth major Cartesian, Jansenist, and Malebranchian themes, and was the center of several controversies. His writings, especially his L'Art de Parler, his Entretiens sur les Sciences, and his works on mathematics, were widely read and used until the late eighteenth century. (The list of editions given by Dr. Girbal in his excellent bibliography is most impressive.) Though hardly an original or seminal thinker, Lamy was responsible for popularizing many new themes in pedagogy, science, mathematics, and philosophy, and it is his version of the Cartesian and Malebranchian innovations that was the one known to many of the savants during the century 1675-1775. Since Dr. Girbal's book is basically a bio-bibliography, he, unfortunately, devotes little time or space to analyzing or evaluating Lamy's own ideas. Much of Lamy's career from the 1680's onward was devoted to his theological works and the controversies they started. He seems to have been a mixture of Cartesian in theological method and a crank in interpretation. The long battles about whether Jesus celebrated the Jewish Passover just before his death (which Lamy denied) and the identification of the various Magdelenes in the Biblical literature are described in detail in this study, but little attempt is made to evaluate Lamy as a scholar or exegete for his time. lie hardly appears the equal of his once brother Oratorian, Richard Simon, or his contemporary, Pierre-Daniel Huet, in either his knowledge of the sources or his sense of critical scholarship. In view of the highly sophisticated and learned arguments Simon was carrying on at the time, it is hard to take Lamy seriously in his own context. The appended documents, the texts inddits, included in the volume, are much more interesting . They deal with the crisis at the University of Angers in 1673-76, when Lamy and other Oratorians were forbidden to teach Cartesianism and certain moral and political theories (quite similar in some cases to themes to appear in Malebranche's Traite de Morale.) The documents indicate both the philosophical Cartesian themes that were taught, their applications to theology, especially to the problem of transubstantiation, and the way the struggle went on. It is hardly a case of the war of science versus theology, since both sides, the traditional Aristotelians, and the avant-garde Jansenist and Cartesian oriented Oratorians, were Christian theologians. The Oraterians appear as the apostles of the "new philosophy" as the rationale of Augustinian Christianity, in much the way Malebranche presented the view in his Recherche and later works. The Aristotelians were trying to make the philosophical and scientific past the vested interest of both the Church and State. And, although Lamy was dismissed , and a good, reliable old time Aristotelian was brought back, and although various edicts of both Church and State were used to drive the nefarious new influences out of the University of Angers, the documents also indicate both how the Oratorians continued to carry on their good works for both the "new science and philosophy" and the "true religion" and the kind of support they had in high places in the State. Lamy might not have been able 280 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY to...