Encyclopedists

Encyclopedists , or Encyclopédistes in French, is a term used to designate the contributors to the famous Encyclopédie of which Denis Diderot was editor-in-chief. This work was predicated on the conviction that all spheres of human existence should be improved in the name of progress and that living can be made more acceptable on the material as well as on the social, political, and economic levels. The key to understanding the Encyclopedists’ attitude toward opera is found in the fact that…