About this ebook
Diderot's work is more directly philosophical, while Rabelais' satire is more carnivalesque. Both writers employ what Bakhtin called the "carnivalesque" using bodily functions, sexuality, and inversions of social hierarchy as tools for liberation from social constraints. Jewels is Diderot's most Rabelaisian work, showing his appreciation for that earlier tradition while adapting it to more aggressive 18th century philosophical purposes, but still directed at the clergy, like Rabelais.This edition contains a new Afterword by the translator, a short biography, a glossary of Philosophical Terms used by Diderot, a chronology of his core life and works, and a summary index of all of Diderot's works. The publication setting of The Indiscreet Jewels reveals Diderot's precarious financial situation in 1748 and his strategic literary calculations. Composed in a matter of weeks to pay off pressing debts, the text nonetheless shows a sophisticated engagement with multiple literary traditions.
Manuscript evidence shows that Diderot received 1,200 livres for the work about four times his annual income from other writing at the time and confirms his awareness of the commercial viability of libertine fiction in mid eighteenth century French literary markets.
