Abstract: The eighteenth century seeks to separate the good ideas from the bad, sort the wheat from the chaff, and dreams about the concision of a “book-library”. What motivates this desire to refine the archive and reduce the multiple to the singular in the form of a book which will summarise all others?
Keyword: Littérature du xviiie siècle, philosophie du xviiie siècle, histoire du xviiie siècle, histoire du livre, épistémologie, Révolution, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Louis Sébastien Mercier, Encyclopédie