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Critical Reflections on Poetry, Painting
and Music 1719
Translated into English in 1748 by Thomas Nugent, who also
translated Montesquieu’s De l’esprit des
lois. A defence, in the ‘battle of the
books’, that in the arts the moderns and superseded the
ancients. “A pioneering, widely quoted, and highly
appreciated book”, which “celebrated the imagination,
creative genius, and taste without denigrating knowledge and
restraint.” (Gay, vol. 2, 298). Voltaire,
Helvétius, Mendelssohn and Lessing were all Dubos’s
disciples and Montesquieu used the Reflections to move
towards a subjectivist, relativist philosophy of art.
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Histoire critique de
l’établissement de la monarchie
française 1735
A work that proved a great success. It attacked feudalism
and legitimized Louis XIV’s attack on the power of the
parlements and offered a defence of his monopoly of legislative and
executive power. Montesquieu presented a
“refutation” of Dubos in De l’esprit des
lois.
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Réflexions Critiques Sur La Poesie et Sur La
Peinture 1755
An author Burke criticises in A Philosophical Inquiry for
preferring painting to poetry.
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