Claude-Joseph Dorat’s Les Tourterelles de Zelmis : Working towards the Definitive

Abstract

Claude-Joseph Dorat was a much-published author during, and for a decade or so after, his lifetime. Decried for frivolousness, superficiality and facility, he did not achieve the academic recognition he sought despite his quarrels with the philosophes . Obituaries in 1780 spoke of his carelessness and disinclination to revise his work, but people who knew him better asserted correctly that the reverse was the case. Study of his bibliography—a daunting field requiring much more effort—and of his revisions of several of his books has reinforced this view in recent decades. The particular case of Les Tourterelles de Zelmis , first published in 1765, amended more than once in the subsequent ten years and finally recast in 1780, confirms this view. The existence of a manuscript revision rounds out this example of an author constantly reshaping his creations.