Translational Dimensions of French Encyclopaedism in the Age of Enlightenment (1680–1800)

Knowledge Transfer, Mediators, Intercultural Processes of Appropriation and Adaption

Against the background of the encyclopaedia as one of the leading media of the 18^th century on the one hand and its transnational contexts of creation on the other, the research project examines the role that translation processes played for the formation of a European knowledge and communication space in the Age of Enlightenment. Four perspectives are at the centre:

1. the systematic recording of all (linguistic) translations of encyclopaedic texts, including information on original versions, translators, editors and prefaces,

2. processes of cultural adaptation, appropriation and autonomisation taking place in individual translation projects,

3. the meaning of translators as intercultural mediators and important actors in the context of the transmission of encyclopaedic knowledge, and

4. the investigation of the role that translations played in the editing of country-specific lemmas of the most important French encyclopaedia of the Enlightenment: Diderot’s and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie.

Project directors are PD Dr habil Susanne Greilich at Regensburg University and Prof Dr Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink at Saarland University, both specialised in Romance philology.

Project description of the Saarland University

Publications (project-related):

Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen . 2019. L’Encyclopédie méthodique en Allemagne (1782-1815).: Approches d’une traduction transculturelle. In Panckoucke et l’Encyclopédie méthodique. Ordre de matières et transversalité, ed. Martine Groult and Luigi Delia, 61–79. Paris: Classiques Garnier.

Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen. 2019. Charles de Villers traducteur, médiateur interculturel et auteur traduit. In Un homme, deux cultures. Charles de Villers entre France et Allemagne (1765-1815), ed. Nicolas Brucker and Franziska Meier, 25–41. Paris: Classiques Garnier.

Greilich, Susanne and Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (eds.). 2020. Écrire l’encyclopédisme, du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours. Paris: Classiques Garnier.

Greilich, Susanne and Lüsebrink Hans-Jürgen. 2020. Écrire l’encyclopédisme, du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours. In Écrire l’encyclopédisme, du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours, ed. Susanne Greilich and Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink, 7–17. Paris: Classiques Garnier.

Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen. 2020. Origines coloniales de l’encyclopédisme sud-américain. Le Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias Occidentales ó América (1786–89) d’Antonio de Alcedo. In Écrire l’encyclopédisme, du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours, ed. Susanne Greilich and Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink, 95–113. Paris: Classiques Garnier.

Greilich, Susanne. 2020. La littérature face à l’encyclopédisme du XIXe siècle. Bouvard et Pécuchet et le Dictionnaire des idées reçues de Gustave Flaubert. In Écrire l’encyclopédisme, du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours, ed. Susanne Greilich and Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink, 315–334. Paris: Classiques Garnier.

Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen and Steen Bille Jørgensen (eds.). 2021. Cultural Transfer Reconsidered. Transnational Perspectives, Translation Processes, Scandinavian and Postcolonial Challenges. Amsterdam: Brill/Rodopi.