François Vincent Toussaint, Voltaire, and the Unpublished Key to the Book of Mœurs
Stenger, Gerhardt
François Vincent Toussaint, Voltaire, and the Unpublished Key to the Book of Mœurs - 2022.
63
In 1748, Les Mœurs by François Vincent Toussaint caused a scandal owing to its avowed deism, but it was also a “livre à clef” (wherein actual persons appear as fictitious characters) in the manner of La Bruyère. Although Toussaint claimed in his Eclaircissement sur les Mœurs (1762) that he had never revealed the identity of his models, we have found the key : it is a four-page manuscript copy, unveiling the identity of about forty characters, that was bound in with an anonymous piece of criticism of Les Mœurs entitled Les Mœurs appréciées (1748) and kept at the Cantonal and University library of Lausanne. One discovers that behind the malevolent portrait of Callimaque lies Voltaire, with whom Toussaint was engaged in a quarrel of priority concerning the man in the iron mask
François Vincent Toussaint, Voltaire, and the Unpublished Key to the Book of Mœurs - 2022.
63
In 1748, Les Mœurs by François Vincent Toussaint caused a scandal owing to its avowed deism, but it was also a “livre à clef” (wherein actual persons appear as fictitious characters) in the manner of La Bruyère. Although Toussaint claimed in his Eclaircissement sur les Mœurs (1762) that he had never revealed the identity of his models, we have found the key : it is a four-page manuscript copy, unveiling the identity of about forty characters, that was bound in with an anonymous piece of criticism of Les Mœurs entitled Les Mœurs appréciées (1748) and kept at the Cantonal and University library of Lausanne. One discovers that behind the malevolent portrait of Callimaque lies Voltaire, with whom Toussaint was engaged in a quarrel of priority concerning the man in the iron mask
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