Le travail du négatif, théorisé au départ par la philosophie, nous a aidés à approcher ce qui apparaît, à nos yeux, comme le cœur de notre étude, cette action qui semble profondément agiter le corpus de fictions choisies. Si le travail du négatif est un mouvement qui prend forme dans un contexte de polarisation où l’autre est toujours sous-entendu, s’il est agitation équivoque et instabilité, comment s’actualise-t-il chez Diderot ? En ce sens, l’étude des circonstances de production s’avère primordiale. Les censures et les réseaux ont une incidence sur les productions artistiques. De plus, les textes denses déploient des techniques de louvoiement qu’il convient de défaire. Des genres au rapport au réel, de la mise en fiction de la pensée aux catégories référentielles, les brouillages de pistes sont réitérés et accordent en fin de compte à la parole une place centrale. Face à ces informations, le travail du lecteur est complexe. Le déploiement de la pensée diderotienne, à travers la multiplicité, est-il lié à cette agitation « négative » ? Enfin, nous interrogeons encore cette impression de mouvement qui se dégage des textes étudiés. Tout se passe comme s’ils tendaient vers la préservation de la force et de la puissance du geste de penser, comme si en même temps entre philosophie et littérature, le style diderotien se construisait. La forme dialogique structure le texte. L’ironie et ses figures façonnent les phrases et les situations de sorte à placer le lecteur dans un inconfort actif, de sorte à répercuter sur lui les questionnements internes au texte et à le déborder. Ce travail du négatif, plus ou moins abondant selon les œuvres, remet en perspective la notion de littérarité. / The work of the negative, a concept that initiated in philosophy, allowed the researcher to tackle the core of this study, as this action appears to shake profoundly the corpus of fictional texts chosen. If the work of the negative is a movement, which is shaped within a context of polarisation where the other is always implied, if there is an ambiguous turmoil and inconstancy, how does it actualize in Diderot’s work? To this extent, the study of the context of writing is essential as censorship and networks impact the arts. Additionally, the density of the texts requires unpacking the rhetorical effect of the convoluted prose. From genres to the connection to reality, from fictionalization of thoughts to narrative mode, tracks are covered repeatedly, thicken the plot, and eventually grant the central places to speech. In light of this information, the reader’s task is intricate. Is this “negative” stir connected to Diderot’s unfolding his thoughts through multiplicity? Lastly, we will probe further the feeling of movement which emanates from the texts at hand. It is as if it converged towards preserving the strength and power of thinking, as if in the meantime at a cross section between philosophy and literature, the style of Diderot was shaping up. A dialogic form structures the writing. Irony and its features mold sentences and situations in order to place the reader in an active discomfort, it reverberates the questioning inherent to the writing, and overflows. The work of the negative, which can be found more or less profusely in Diderot’s work, puts the notion of literarity into perspective.

The Rococo period in the arts, flourishing mainly from about 1710 to about 1750, was stylistically unified, but nevertheless its tremendous productivity and appeal throughout Occidental culture has proven difficult to explain. Having no contemporary theoretical literature, the Rococo is commonly taken to have been a final and degenerate form of the Baroque era or an extravagance arising from the supposed careless frivolity of the elites, including the intellectuals of the Enlightenment. Neither approach adequately accounts for Rococo style. Naming the Rococo raises profound issues for understanding the relations between conception and production in historical terms. Against the many difficulties that the term has involved in accounting for an immense but elusive cultural movement, this thesis argues that some of the chief philosophical conceptions of the period clarify the particular character and significance of Rococo production. Rococo production is here studied chiefly in decor, architecture, and the plastic arts. This thesis also makes an extended general argument for the value of intellectual history. Rococo style is a group of visual effects of which the central character is atectonicity. This is established by a synthesizing overview of Rococo ornamental motifs. Principal theorists of post-Cartesian thought have failed to see how these distinguish Rococo style from both Baroque and Enlightenment culture. The analysis addresses the historical narratives of Benjamin, Adorno, Foucault, Deleuze, and others about Baroque and Enlightenment culture. The core historical claim of this thesis is that Rococo atectonic effects are visual forms of the anti-materialist, idealist ontology of George Berkeley and of the metaphysics and ontology in the early work of Giambattista Vico. Close readings of important passages from works of both philosophers published in 1710 develop the relationship between atectonics and idealist ontology. Both men rejected the Baroque hierarchical cosmology in favor of finitude as the key to human understanding. The readings center on the issue of causality, including Berkeley's views of the perfect contingency of the world and on Vico's theories of truth and ingenium. A reading of Diderot's critique of the Rococo, which led the reaction to it, shows that he recognized the power of idealist ontology in the Rococo cultural production. The larger force in the rejection of Rococo is the emergence of the sublime as a morally fearful feature of physical nature. Montesquieu's aesthetic work also shows the transition to a more rigidly determined view of existence, which was expressed but constrained in the little-recognized lattice motif in Rococo arts. The result of these readings is the influence during and after the Rococo period of the concept of continuous creation, in which the memory and imagination of the human subject relays God-given powers of creation into the production of culture. Continuous creation also suggested a human capability to animate material nature. Rococo style displays this as a pre-cinematic effects that represent the non-material, non-causal deep structure of reality.