Breadcrumbs Section. Click here to navigate to respective pages.
Chapter

Chapter
Louise d’Epinay’s Conversations d’Emilie
DOI link for Louise d’Epinay’s Conversations d’Emilie
Louise d’Epinay’s Conversations d’Emilie book
Louise d’Epinay’s Conversations d’Emilie
DOI link for Louise d’Epinay’s Conversations d’Emilie
Louise d’Epinay’s Conversations d’Emilie book
ABSTRACT
The two editions of Louise d'Epinay's Conversations d'Emilie, published six years apart, warranted two distinct sets of reviews, one in the mid-1770s and the other in the early 1780s. Jean-Francois de la Harpe opened his piece, interestingly, with a rather long parallel between the work of an educator, such as Epinay, and of a journal editor, such as himself. la Harpe used Epinay's voice to argue that new criteria were needed to assess the appeal of Les Conversations and to legitimize, once more, the favorable opinion that he had of such an unusual book. Between the first and second editions of Les Conversations d'Emilie, Claude-Joseph Dorat signed an article in 1777 in Le Journal des dames. Instead of openly faulting Epinay for not focusing enough on piety and religion, Garat hinted at his discontent by laying bare his agenda as a champion of religious education.