REPUBLIC OF BELLES-LETTRES. A COMMENTARY TO UKRAINIAN TRANSLATION OF THE TERMS FROM DAVID HUME’S “OF ESSAY-WRITING”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17721/2523-4064.2021/5-2/8Keywords:
Belle Lettres, Republic of Letters, conversation, taste, essay-writing, essays, David HumeAbstract
The article is a commentary to philosophical terms of David Hume’s “Of Essay Writing”, that became necessary in working on its Ukrainian translation. “Of Essay Writing” is an essay on conversation that was published in English in 1742 in the first edition of “Essays, Moral and Political” by D. Hume. The commentary focuses on two concepts that are important for understanding the content and cultural and historical context of an essay. First, the concept of “Republic of Letters” is considered. This Renaissance metaphor was in active use in the XV-XVIII centuries and described the conversational community of European intellectuals, formed by correspondent networks. In the age of Enlightenment, an alternative to correspondence was conversation in the newly formed public sphere of communication, concentrated in salons, clubs and other common social spaces. In his essay, D. Hume contrasts the concept of "Republic of Letters" with the concept of “Empire of Conversation”, emphasizing the difference between the worlds of “learned” and “conversible”, where “learned” use correspondence and “conversible” participate in public conversation. Secondly, this commentary examines the concept of "Belles Lettres" - a term of Renaissance origin, the part of humanists educational project “bonnae litterae”, which revealed the role of “studia humanitatis” (humanities) in shaping the aesthetics of writing (including letter writing). David Hume associate "Belles Lettres" with the concept of “taste”, which is a central category of his empiricist aesthetics. According to Hume, the taste comes from specific experience, the components of which are the humanities. At the same time, “Belles Lettres” requires the experience of conversation, and essay-writing is a means, which D. Hume proposes to use to spread the achievements of the “Republic of Letters” in the community of the “Empire of Conversation”.
References
Habermas J. (2000). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Lviv: Litopys. [In Ukrainian].
Hume, D. (2003). A Treatise of Human Nature: being An Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. Kyiv: Publishing House “The Universe” [In Ukrainian].
Rollin, Ch. (1789). The Method of Teaching and Studying the Belles Lettres. Vol.1. (Crokov I., trans.). Saint Petersburg, The Imperial Academy of Sciences [In Russian].
Bator, P. (1996) The University of Edinburgh Belles Lettres Society (1759-64) and the rhetoric of the novel. Rhetoric Review, 14:2. 280-292.
Blair, H. (2005) Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Burke, P. (1999) Erasmus and the republic of letters. European Review, (Vol. 7, No. 1). 5-17.
Capdeville, V. & Kerherve, A. (Eds.) (2019). British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century. Challenging the Anglo-French Connection. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press.
Coleman N., Stanford University. (n.d.). Mapping the Republic of Letters. Mapping the Republic of Letters. Retrieved June 12, 2021, from http://republicofletters.stanford.edu
Craveri, B. (2006). The Age of Conversation. New York Review Books.
Chevalier, T. (Ed.) (1997) Encyclopedia of THE ESSAY. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers.
Goodmen, D. (1994). The Republic of Letters. A cultural history of the French Enlightenment. Ithaca and London: Corwell University Press.
Hallotan, S. M. (1993) Rhetoric in the American College Curriculum // PRE/TEXT: The First Decade / ed. by J.Vitanza. Pittsburgh and London: University of Pittsburgh Press. P.93-116.
Hankings, J. (2007). Humanism, Scholasticism and Renaissance philosophy. In Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy / ed. by J. Hankings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 30-48.
Hume, D. (1987a) Of Commerce. In D. Hume Essays Moral, Political, Literary, ed. and with a Foreword, Notes, and Glossary by Eugene F. Miller, with an appendix of variant readings from the 1889 edition by T.H. Green and T.H. Grose, revised edition (pp. 252-268). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Hume, D. (1987b) Of Delicacy of Taste and Passion. In D. Hume Essays Moral, Political, Literary, ed. and with a Foreword, Notes, and Glossary by Eugene F. Miller, with an appendix of variant readings from the 1889 edition by T.H. Green and T.H. Grose, revised edition (pp. 3-9). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Hume, D. (1987c) Of Essay-Writing. In D. Hume Essays Moral, Political, Literary, ed. and with a Foreword, Notes, and Glossary by Eugene F. Miller, with an appendix of variant readings from the 1889 edition by T.H. Green and T.H. Grose, revised edition (pp. 533-536). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Hume, D. (1987d) Of the Standart od Taste. In D. Hume Essays Moral, Political, Literary, ed. and with a Foreword, Notes, and Glossary by Eugene F. Miller, with an appendix of variant readings from the 1889 edition by T.H. Green and T.H. Grose, revised edition (pp. 228-250). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Hume, D. (2007) Essai sur le genre essai (Ph.Folliot, Trans). Retrieved May 27, 2021 from https://philotra.pagesperso-orange.fr/essai%20sur%20le%20genre%20essai.htm#_ftnref3
Hume, D. (2011) A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford University Press, U.S.A.; Reprint edition
Prendergast, A. (2015). Literary Salons across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century. Hampshire: Macmillan.
Rasmussen, D. (2017) The Infidel and the Professor. David Hume, Adam Smith, and the friendship that shaped Modern thought. Princeton University Press.
Rollin, Ch. (1773). The Method of Teaching and Studying the Belles Lettres; or, an Introduction to Languages, Poetry, Rhetoric, History, Moral Philosophy, Physics &c. with Reflections on Taste, and Instrucions with regard to the Eloquence of the PULPIT, the BAR and the Stage. the Whole Illustrated with Passages from the Most Famous Poets and Orators, Ancient and Modern, with Critical Remarks on Them; Designed More Particularly for Students in the Universities. Vol.1. The tenth Edition. Edinburgh: W. Drummond, A. Donaldson, J. Bell, and C. Elliot.
Rollin, Ch. (1819). De la maniere d'enseigner et d'etudier les belles-lettres, par rapport à l'esprit et au coeur; ou Traite des etudes. T. 1. Lyon: Rusand.
SKILLNET - Sharing Knowledge in Learned and Literary Networks | Project website of ERC SKILLNET. (n.d.). SKILLNET – Sharing Knowledge in Learned and Literary Networks. Retrieved June 12, 2021, from https://skillnet.nl/
Smith, A. (1983) Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. Reprint. Oxford (Oxfordshire): Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press.
Van Miert, D. (n. d.) The Intricacies of Conceptual History: The 192 Republics of Letters in Latin. SKILLNET. https://skillnet.nl/the-intricacies-of-conceptual-history-the-192-republics-of-letters-in-latin/
Van Miert, D. et al. (2014) What was the Republic of Letters? A brief introduction to a long history (1417-2008). Groniek, 2014. 269-287.
Whilley-Blackwell (2013). Belles lettres. In A Dictionary of Literary Forms and Literary Theory. (5th ed., p. 69-70).
ISSN 
ISSN 
