Les voyages portugais dans l'Histoire générale des voyages de l'abbé Prévost

Sylviane Albertan-Coppola : Portuguese journeys in Prévost's Histoire générale des voyages. Prévost's collection of travel accounts, like the Encyclopédie, aims, by means of synthetic pictures, to provide and popularize universal knowledge. The conception of history behind the work is similar to that of Montesquieu or Voltaire, for human development is not presented as the result of providence or chance, but as a simple chain of cause and effect. This can be seen in the way he treats Portuguese travellers. The importance assigned to their travels, which varies between 1746 and 1759, derives from the editor's task. Prévost, at first given simply the job of translating, soon took on the transitional task of correcting, and finally undertook the work of an editor, following the synthetic method which he preferred. Thus we can see that the very definition of a Portuguese voyage changed according to the sources and the plan of each part.Albertan-Coppola Sylviane. Les voyages portugais dans l'Histoire générale des voyages de l'abbé Prévost. In: Dix-huitième Siècle, n°31, 1999. Mouvement des sciences et esthétique(s) sous la direction de Christine Rolland, François Azouvi et Michel Baridon. pp. 491-506