Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s ‘Entretiens’ (1773): Rewriting Fontenelle

Abstract

This study, both structuralist and diachronic, compares two sets of fictional dialogues which mark the beginning and the end of the Enlightenment. These are the Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes of Fontenelle (1686-7), and – far less well-known – the ‘Entretiens sur les arbres, les fleurs et les fruits’ of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (a segment within his Voyage à l’île de France, 1773). The debt of Bernardin’s dialogues to their predecessor has been asserted in general terms, but here the relationship is examined systematically. The first part of the article offers a comparison between the two works in terms of genre, target readership, internal structure, speakers (male and female), topic and theme. The second part sets out a series of close similarities on the textual level, confirming beyond doubt the influence of Fontenelle’s work on Bernardin. But the dialogues of 1773 can also be perceived as re-writing those of 1686-7. Fontenelle’s Entretiens declare for a ‘scientific’ universe that works like a machine, and for elite sociable pleasures which are equally Modernist. Bernardin’s ‘Entretiens’, anticipating his Études de la nature (1784), repudiate the mechanical in favour of an organic world of nature infused with spirit, foreshadowing Romanticism and also the French Revolution.