Madame de La Carlière explained

See also: Ceci n'est pas un conte.

Madame de La Carlière, sub-titled On the inconsequence of public judgement of our actions, is a fable written by the French writer Denis Diderot in 1772, and published for the first time in 1798.^[1] It was published posthumously, as Diderot had died in 1784.

Preceded by This is not a fable and followed by Supplement to the Voyage of Bougaineville, it forms a triptych of moral fables written in 1772^[2] that would appear in the Literary Correspondence in 1773.^[3]

Madame de La Carlière takes its name from the mother of Sophie Volland, Élisabeth Françoise Brunel de La Carlière.^[4]

In 1988, Madame de La Carlière was performed as a stage piece alongside Diderot's novel Rameau's Nephew at New York University, as part of a celebration commemorating the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.^[5]

Bibliography

• Laffitte M., Diderot : hésitations autour de la promesse (Histoire de Madame de la Carlière). In : Revue romane (ISSN 0035-3906), 1992, vol. 27, n°1, p. 90-103.

Notes and References

1. Œuvres complètes de Diderot éditées par Naigeon, Paris, Desray, 1798.
2. [Denis Diderot|Diderot]
3. For more details on this triptych, we may read the introduction written for the article consecrated in the first volume, This is not a fable.
4. Raymond Trousson, Denis Diderot, Paris, Tallandier, 2005, p. 212.
5. Bernstein, Richard, "This Time, Bicentennial Is France's," The New York Times, 29 September 1988.