The Collected Works of Denis Diderot

The Indiscreet Jewels marks Diderot's first foray into fictional prose and is his most commercially successful work during his lifetime. Set in a thinly disguised version of modern France reimagined as the Congo, this libertine novel centers on Sultan Mangogul, who receives a magical ring that allows him to make women's genitalia ("jewels") speak and reveal their sexual histories. Though often dismissed as mere libertine fiction, beneath the novel's bawdy surface lies a chaotic social critique, philosophical discourse, and political satire representing the intellectual Chaos of the Enlightenment. The work's commercial success it went through several editions despite official censorship helped finance Diderot's more serious philosophical endeavors, including his work on the Encyclopédie.Diderot's "The Indiscreet Jewels" (1748) deliberately follows in the tradition of Rabelaisian satire. Like Rabelais' "Gargantua and Pantagruel" (1530s 1550s), Diderot uses sexual content and fantasy as vehicles for social critique.

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.