La present tesi doctoral analitza la confrontació que va tenir lloc al llarg del segle XVIII entre el naturalista francès Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, iniciador de la teoria de la degeneració i la inferioritat americanes, i el principal redactor de la Declaració d’Independència dels Estats Units, Thomas Jefferson, qui va realitzar la desarticulació de la mateixa. S’ha dut a terme un buidatge en profunditat de les obres d’aquests dos autors que ha permès establir els paràmetres principals de les posicions corresponents, i s’hi han afegit també les d’altres autors secundaris que van participar en la polèmica de manera significativa per tal d’obtenir una millor perspectiva. L’objectiu primordial ha estat establir la importància d’aquest debat en la creació del discurs identitari de la jove nació nord-americana a través de l’estudi comparatiu de la influència en aquest sentit de les temàtiques més tractades. / This doctoral thesis analyses the confrontation that took place throughout the 18th century between the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, initiator of the American degeneracy theory, and the main writer of the United States’ Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, who dismantled it. The works of these two authors have been thoroughly examined in order to establish the main parameters of their corresponding positions. Also, the works of secondary authors who participated in the polemic in a significant way have been added in order to obtain a better perspective. The main goal has been to establish the importance of this debate in the creation of the identity speech of the young North American nation by using a comparative study of the influence, in this sense, of each one of the topics treated.

In mid-eighteenth century Paris, two Benedictine monks from the Congregation of Saint-Maur – also known as the Maurists – started compiling a universal dictionary of arts, crafts, and sciences. The project was initiated simultaneously with what would become one of the most famous literary enterprises in Western intellectual history: the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert. The latter started as an augmented translation of Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, but it was constructed with another French dictionary as its ideological counterpart: the Jesuits’ Dictionnaire de Trévoux. While the Encyclopédie eventually turned into a controversial but successful best-seller, considered as the most important medium of Enlightenment thought, the Benedictines never finished or published their work. After a decade, the manuscripts were put aside in the monastery library, and were soon forgotten. For about two hundred and sixty years, the Maurists’ dictionary material has largely escaped the attention of researchers, and its history of production has been unknown.      This dissertation examines the history and characteristics of the Maurists’ enterprise. The manuscripts are compared to the Encyclopédie and the Dictionnaire de Trévoux, and the project situated within its monastic environment of production, the history of the encyclopedic dictionary, and the Enlightenment culture. The study has an interdisciplinary character and combines perspectives of History of Science and Ideas, History of Monasticism, History of Encyclopedism, and History of the Book. The research procedure is distinguished by a microhistorical approach, where the studied materials are analyzed in a detailed manner, and the research process included in the narrative.       The dissertation shows that the Maurists early found themselves in a rival situation with the embryonic Encyclopédie, and that the two projects had several common denominators that distinguished them from the predecessors within the genre. At the same time, the Maurists were making a dictionary unique in the eighteenth century, which assumed a third position in relation to the works of the encyclopédistes and the Jesuits. The study provides new perspectives on the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert, the intellectual activities of the Congregation of Saint-Maur, as well as the editor in charge of the Maurist dictionary: Dom Antoine-Joseph Pernety, otherwise known for his alchemical writings.

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