| Authorship Notes |
A series of documents survive in the Archives of the Académie of Lyon related to the 1785-1787 prize contest, shedding light on the entire selection process. We find judgments on the submitted pieces, a brief summary of all pieces and a longer summary of the best pieces, as well as the reasons for their final decision, awarding the prize to Turlin's anti-travel dissertation. The final version of this was presented to he general assembly of the Académie on 4th of December 1787.
However, in the printed version of the jury's report, a new dimension unfolds. The jury was not fully happy to award the prize to a dissertation which doesn't provide an actual travelling program, and negates its very possibility. Instead, they decided to incorporate into a travelling program that they created, using Turlin to indicate travel's possible dangers, but providing advice for a real program as well. As such, the jury's comments became an apodemic dissertation as such.
Contains an introduction on the whole of the contest, with a rather negative overall opinion on the quality of the texts and a list of noteworthy elements from all dissertations except the prizewinners (pp.3-20); opinions on the winner of the second prize, Mathieu (pp.47-49); and extensive comments on Turlin's prize-winning essay, with opinions on the possibility of a useful form of educational travel, under the guidance of an excellent tutor (pp.97-106). |
