Jeremy L. Caradonna. The Enlightenment in Practice: Academic Prize Contests and Intellectual Culture in France, 1670–1794.

“The element of participation is the most important contribution that this book makes to the historiography of the Enlightenment,” concludes Jeremy L. Caradonna about his work. Indeed, his study of academic competitions, the concours sponsored by Parisian and provincial academies and learned societies in the eighteenth century, reveals the degree of public enthusiasm for such disquisitions. Moving from an initial focus on the glorification of the monarchy in the seventeenth century, essay competitions increasingly invited reflection on a wide variety of subjects. By the second half of the eighteenth century, although insisting on decorum and moderation, academies solicited solutions to France's (and at times humanity's) pressing problems, be they institutional, technological, or moral. Thus poverty and slavery were mulled over alongside agricultural productivity and water purification. Some subjects were more risky such as improvements to the penal system or the organization of provincial assemblies. Should the line between suggestion for improvement and criticism be crossed, royal displeasure might be aroused. Topics were therefore vetted beforehand and only bold intendants like Jacques Turgot might dare bypass the censors in sponsoring essay competitions on “financial matters” at the Agricultural Society of Limoges. Academies did not court controversy but neither did they shy away from it as the most famous of concours entries demonstrates. When Jean-Jacques Rousseau responded to the question about the usefulness of the arts and sciences, posed by the Dijon Academy in 1750, by condemning the notion of progress itself, the Academicians did not agree with him but admired the eloquence with which he had argued the case. Just as Bernard Fontenelle had used the concours half a century earlier to build his reputation, so would Rousseau, Jean-François Marmontel, and others profit from the practice to break into the Republic of Letters. Why were people so eager to participate? The competitions offered cultural capital to the winners, Caradonna argues, as well as a nice sum of money, although he assumes too quickly perhaps that the poorer participants were more tempted by the latter than the former. Predictably, except for a few “popular” entries by farmers or artisans, participants came from the ranks of the professional middle classes, although aristocratic hobbyists might also send in the occasional scientific essay, and noblewomen participate in poetry competitions. Another of Caradonna's contributions to our understanding of the Enlightenment comes in fact from his list of female competitors. The anonymity of the entries allowed both men and women to compete. Each contestant chose a Latin aphorism as nom de plume and the actual names, hidden in envelopes, were only revealed at the end of the contest. Although women mainly took part in literary competitions, not all shied away from more scholarly topics, Mme de Châtelet and the future Mme Roland being the most notable. Caradonna makes a persuasive case about the importance of the concours in European but especially in French intellectual life, because it drew a vast array of people into the Enlightenment “practices” of critical thinking and exchange of ideas. Most significantly this took the form of writing and not merely reading. More problematic is the issue of content. Eschewing Daniel Roche's study of the social background of academic communities, as well as content analysis other than choice selection, Caradonna wishes us to focus on the practice itself. Concours invited widespread debate, and, he believes, enabled the state to tap hitherto unknown expertise, such as that of Antoine Lavoisier.