Elie Luzac and L’homme plus que machine (1748): The Dialogic Voice of an Enlightenment Printer

• Main Authors: Lieve Jooken, Guy Rooryck
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina 2018-01-01
• Series: Cadernos de Tradução
• Subjects: Elie Luzac; Traduction au dix-huitieme siecle; Exil; Materialisme; Voix enarrative
• Online Access: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/traducao/article/view/52340

Early into his career as one of the most successful printerpublishers of the Dutch Republic, Elie Luzac (1721-1796) played a pivotal role in disseminating the materialist ideas of La Mettrie’s Homme machine (1747). This paper focuses on the dialogic voice (Bakhtine) in a publication by Luzac himself, which oscillates between asserting and refuting La Mettrie’s views. Descended from Huguenot refugees, Luzac condemns what he publishes and publishes what he condemns. This discursive ambiguity emerges in Luzac’s L’homme plus que machine (1748), a work which cites La Mettrie’s theses in order to contest them. Building on the succès de scandale of the English version of L’homme machine (Man a Machine, 1749), the English translation of L’homme plus que machine, Man more than a Machine, appeared in 1752. The present contribution examines how the translator’s Voice, which is defined as an enarrative voice, effaces the concealed claims of the original text and replaces them with a discourse whose explicit anti-materialist tenor contrasts with the vehement rhetoric of Man a Machine.