Les Lumires catholiques et le roman franais

Au sicle des Lumires, le roman de nature difiante emprunte de nouvelles avenues, embrassant la forme didactique et le parti antiphilosophique. Au contact des ides et des valeurs que dfendent Encyclopdistes et philosophes, les romanciers et les romancires sont amens sinterroger sur la religion dans ses rapports sociaux et moraux avec la socit et assortir les acquis philosophiques aux dogmes chrtiens laide dun discours alliant foi et raison. En mobilisant la sensibilit, ils proposent un expdient pieux selon lequel la religion serait mise au service de lordre tabli et de la cohsion sociale. Le discours optimiste que donnent lire les romans des Lumires catholiques renoue avec lide de perfectibilit humaine et de progrs social, dvoilant un espace de chevauchement qui brouille les frontires entre philosophie et antiphilosophie et qui tmoigne de leur porosit. Cet ouvrage collectif a pour objectifs dexplorer les entreprises de mise en roman des Lumires catholiques dans leurs dimensions narrative, rhtorique, topique et philosophique afin den souligner loriginalit et la complexit, dexposer leur apport aux dbats qui marquent le XVIIIe sicle et de les rhabiliter dans la constellation littraire des Lumires. --- In the eighteenth century, edifying novels explored new strategies, embracing the didactic form and the antiphilosophic party. Confronted with the ideas and values that the Encyclopaedists and philosophers defended, Catholic novelists were led to consider religion in its moral and social relationships to society and to reconcile philosophical findings and Christian doctrines by producing discourses on the union of faith and reason. By mobilizing sensibility, they propose a pious expedient whereby religion would serve the established order and maintain social cohesion. The optimistic discourse found in the novels of the Catholic Enlightenment is characterised by its belief in human perfectibility and social progress, which reveals an in-between space where the line separating philosophy from anti-philosophy is blurred and shown to be quite porous. This edited collection aims to study the novelistic experiments of the Catholic Enlightenment in their narrative, rhetorical, topical, and philosophical dimensions in order to show their originality and complexity, to reveal their contributions in the great debates of the eighteenth century, and to give them back their due place in the literary constellation of the Enlightenment.