| Authorship Notes |
Turlin triumphed at the 1787 academic prize contest held by the Academy of Lyon with a dissertation claiming that travel cannot be beneficial in education. As the internal communication of the jury, as well as their official comments, clearly show, they awarded the prize to Turlin not because they agreed with him, but almost despite its content; but Turlin's was considerably superior in stylistic and rhetorical ability. Turlin opens his texts with the spectacular comment: "Travels are good and are to be forbidden" - in the current "perverted century", even the best things are corrupted. The entire dissertation discusses why no young man can be ready to travel: accumulating knowledge is illusory, grasping the world is beyond man's capacity. Daniel Roche ('Humeurs vagabondes', 86.) considers that Turlin's victory reflects the provincial academies leaning towards an 'acceptable rousseauism'; he also considers the 'perverted century' Turlin criticizes as a rousseauistic cliché. However, Turlin comes from the Jansenist hotbed that is the Parlement of Paris; and his criticism of present times can be also read as a sign of pre-revolutionary crisis. The dissertation was later published in a slightly abridged form as part of Exrait des discours (1788), described elsewhere in this database. |
