Exhibit spotlights French Enlightenment controversy

A new exhibit at Grand Valley is the first public showing of one of the few full sets of the Encyclopédie – a text published between 1751 and 1772 that attempted to record all human knowledge while promoting freedom of expression.

"Disruptive Knowledge: An exhibition on Diderot's Encyclopédie and the World of the Enlightenment" is on display through March 31 in the Mary Idema Pew Library's Exhibition Space, with a special reception taking place Thursday, March 24, from 5-6:30 p.m.

Robert Beasecker, director of Special Collections and University Archives, said the Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie and Voltaire's pocket-size Dictionnaire philosophique, which is also featured in the exhibit, are two of the most important texts of the French Enlightenment. He explained that both questioned the intolerance of religious institutions and the authority of the state. 

"Although many of the volumes of the Encyclopédie have been digitized and can be found online by faculty, staff and students, the handling of the actual books, touching paper that is 250 years old, and examining the thousands of wood-engraved fold-out illustrations is a valuable learning experience," Beasecker said.

With 29 volumes and more than 21 million words, the Encyclopédie illustrates a number of values that are still held in high regard today, including political liberty, freedom of expression, religious tolerance, critical inquiry and scientific thinking.

To help the general audience digest these values and ideologies, Scott St. Louis, senior history major, collaborated with University Libraries, David Eick, associate professor of French, and Ellen Adams, assistant professor of art, to create posters for the exhibit.

"The overall theme of the exhibit is that of disruption," St. Louis said. "We hope to provide students with an understanding of how learned men and women of the French Enlightenment unsettled the power of religious and social tradition in their society through appeals to reason and tolerance."

St. Louis said his interest in studying the Encyclopédie began during European Civilization I and II, a yearlong sequence course for first-year students in the Frederik Meijer Honors College. The instructors, Eick and Adams, utilize Reacting to the Past (RTTP) as a way to teach their students.

RTTP is an interdisciplinary teaching method that involves complex games that are set in the past during periods such as the Renaissance, Enlightenment and French Revolution. The goal is for students to learn by taking on roles informed by classic texts. To learn more about this method of teaching, read about RTTP in the winter 2016 issue of Grand Valley Magazine.

For more information about the exhibit, contact Scott St. Louis at [email protected] or call the Mary Idema Pew Library at (616) 331-3500.