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Three Croismare Documents: Weighing the Authenticity of Letters to Diderot's “Religieuse” and Mme Madin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Marquis de Croismare ,
Dan Valahu  and
Heather Lloyd
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Extract

Thus does Denis Diderot express his skepticism about whether it was actually the Marquis de Croismare, an Ostensibly Innocent player in the machinations leading to the composition of La religieuse, who replied to letters to him by Diderot and company or whether Frédéric Grimm and friends tricked Diderot into believing it was Croismare. Counterbalancing the philosophe's questioning volley is Grimm's assertion in the “Préface”:

Vous voudrez bien vous souvenir que toutes ses [Madin's] lettres, ainsi que celles de sa recluse, ont été fabriquées par nous autres enfants de Bélial, et que toutes les lettres de son généreux protecteur sont véritables et ont été écrites de bonne foi, ce qu'on eut toutes les peines du monde à persuader à M. Diderot qui se croyait persiflé par le marquis et par ses amis.

(Diderot, Religieuse 33)

Type
Little-Known Documents
Information
PMLA , Volume 121 , Issue 2 , March 2006 , pp. 532 - 545
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2006

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Footnotes

The photographs of Croismare's discourse to the Société Royale d'Agriculture de Caen, on pages 537-39, are reproduced by permission of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen and those of his letter to Père André, on pages 541-42, by permission of the Bibliothèque de Caen.

References

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