Prose of the World

"Innovative, lively, and full of ideas and insights, Prose of the World is a major contribution to our understanding and appreciation of Diderot's thought."—Thomas Pavel, author of The Lives of the Novel: A History

"This book represents a significant contribution by one of the world's leading literary scholars and public intellectuals, whose deep familiarity with the history of ideas and philosophy display a rare ingenuity."—Markus Gabriel, author of Why the World Does Not Exist

"Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Literature Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, brings to bear his 50-year intellectual love affair with Diderot to give us this magisterial study."—Dr. Cliff Cunningham, Sun New Austin

"Does Diderot (1713–84) have a particular affinity with the present time? Could the 21st century become, in terms of reception and resonance, the Age of Diderot, as the 19th was the Age of Voltaire and the 20th the Age of Rousseau? These questions drive this ambitious, erudite work by one of today's leading cultural historians and literary critics...Essential." CHOICE

"Gumbrecht's readings of these texts are astute, rigorous, and thought-provoking, and resist any straightforward or reductive explanation of Diderot's ideas.... By turns effortlessly readable and intriguingly opaque, intellectually provocative in its reflections and yet hard to pin down to one thesis, this study encapsulates something of its genial yet complex subject matter in its very approach."—Joseph Harris, Lessing Yearbook