Rhetoric and Natural History : Buffon in Polemical and Literary Context

This book examines the rhetorical dimension of eighteenth-century natural history.

It focuses on the French naturalist and literary stylist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, author of the bestselling multi-volume Histoire naturelle (1749-1789).

Natural history as Buffon and his contemporaries knew it remains a fascinating object of study for its breadth, its cultural openness, and its disorderly energy.

Rhetoric here is understood as a set of techniques for attracting and persuading an audience.

As a contribution both to literary studies and to the history of science, Rhetoric and natural history adds to our understanding of the intellectual culture of the French Enlightenment.