Thank you!! (Also, hmm, I just went to look for what we were naming this and morbane seems to think it's still too broad. I wonder if we should maybe even just go with "Francesco Algarotti's friends and lovers," lol. Mods don't have to know that this is still extremely broad Though since no one but us will have heard of Algarotti, I actually kind of wonder whether we should put Voltaire in the title (something like "Voltaire's friends" or "Two degrees from Voltaire"??) -- that way other people will be interested as well, and I think most of the people we are trying to nominate could be connected to him in some way?)
FANDOM NAME: whatever we end up naming it WHAT MAKES IT GREAT:
The Age of Enlightenment was a time in the 18th Century when philosophers and scientists got very excited about reason! science! liberty! and other such matters. [this is the bit that sounds dumb to me, please fix this]
There were some very interesting and cool people who were part of this movement. My favorite is Émilie du Châtelet, who was super awesome. She was Voltaire's lover, but she could run circles around him in terms of science and mathematical prowess. Her mathematics tutor wrote to a friend when he first began giving lessons to her and to Voltaire that she was 'altogether remarkable,' while he could not even make the other understand what mathematics was. She couldn't find a good textbook to teach her son physics, so she just wrote her own! She wrote a translation/analysis of Newton's Principia (and was correcting the proofs while recovering from childbirth, and sent them off a day before she died) that was so great that it is still the standard in France today.
She was part of a larger group of people who were also really interesting (though Émilie is my fave). [Depending on whether we're calling out the relationship to Voltaire] Voltaire is, of course, fascinating: he was always there for the underdog, although if you weren't an underdog you were likely to feel the sting of his pen! Francesco Algarotti was a polymath and dabbled in all kinds of different things, including having sex with... quite a lot of people! Including a love triangle with the writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the politican and writer Lord Hervey (who also got embroiled in other political-sexual scandals related to the royal family).
Basically, this whole thing is a giant soap opera, with Émilie as the Mary Sue super-heroine, only she's actually real :D
WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): I'll put in the clips here, as well as link to the rheinsberg post, but I need to sleep now so will do it tomorrow, or after we find a name for our fandom...
I did consider "Six Steps of Francesco Algarotti" as an alternative label. :) "Age of Voltaire" - which the Engligthenment is actually referred to in France - might do, BUT I've also just mustered a defense based on precedent and connection for the current label in my reply to Morbane, which also features cross connections for the characters we've nominated, check it out. :)
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Yuletide Nominations, Redux
Date: 2020-09-24 02:00 pm (UTC)Émilie du Chatelet: ca twelve minutes vid about Émilie and why she's cool, and
Clips from the play about her, "The Marquise du Chatelet defends her life tonight".
Re: Yuletide Nominations, Redux
Date: 2020-09-25 05:38 am (UTC)(Also, hmm, I just went to look for what we were naming this and morbane seems to think it's still too broad. I wonder if we should maybe even just go with "Francesco Algarotti's friends and lovers," lol.
Mods don't have to know that this is still extremely broadThough since no one but us will have heard of Algarotti, I actually kind of wonder whether we should put Voltaire in the title (something like "Voltaire's friends" or "Two degrees from Voltaire"??) -- that way other people will be interested as well, and I think most of the people we are trying to nominate could be connected to him in some way?)FANDOM NAME: whatever we end up naming it
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT:
The Age of Enlightenment was a time in the 18th Century when philosophers and scientists got very excited about reason! science! liberty! and other such matters. [this is the bit that sounds dumb to me, please fix this]
There were some very interesting and cool people who were part of this movement. My favorite is Émilie du Châtelet, who was super awesome. She was Voltaire's lover, but she could run circles around him in terms of science and mathematical prowess. Her mathematics tutor wrote to a friend when he first began giving lessons to her and to Voltaire that she was 'altogether remarkable,' while he could not even make the other understand what mathematics was. She couldn't find a good textbook to teach her son physics, so she just wrote her own! She wrote a translation/analysis of Newton's Principia (and was correcting the proofs while recovering from childbirth, and sent them off a day before she died) that was so great that it is still the standard in France today.
She was part of a larger group of people who were also really interesting (though Émilie is my fave). [Depending on whether we're calling out the relationship to Voltaire] Voltaire is, of course, fascinating: he was always there for the underdog, although if you weren't an underdog you were likely to feel the sting of his pen! Francesco Algarotti was a polymath and dabbled in all kinds of different things, including having sex with... quite a lot of people! Including a love triangle with the writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the politican and writer Lord Hervey (who also got embroiled in other political-sexual scandals related to the royal family).
Basically, this whole thing is a giant soap opera, with Émilie as the Mary Sue super-heroine, only she's actually real :D
WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): I'll put in the clips here, as well as link to the rheinsberg post, but I need to sleep now so will do it tomorrow, or after we find a name for our fandom...
Re: Yuletide Nominations, Redux
Date: 2020-09-25 05:57 am (UTC)