ABSTRACT
The Encyclopaedia or, to give it its full alternative title, The Systematic Dictionary of the Arts, Sciences and Crafts, stands as the greatest monument to the French Enlightenment. It is a systemised, catalogued summary of human knowledge, guided by reason, which stretches in its completed form to a colossal 20,000,000 words. The Encyclopaedia boasted a number of well-known contributors, including Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Diderot and D'Alembert. Of these, Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot were, amongst other things, philosophers and playwrights. Voltaire's plays, although now virtually unknown to English-speaking audiences, were enormously successful in his time — and were praised to the skies, not least by Voltaire himself. Rousseau was better known as a writer of operas (both music and libretti), but he was also a moderately successful playwright, as was Diderot. 1
