Rameau's Nephew Analysis

Explication: Rameau’s Nephew This paper is an explication of a small passage from Denis Diderot’s dialogue, Rameau’s Nephew. First, I will begin by identifying the taxonomic elements I used to examine the text, and then go on to acknowledge the relationships between these elements and how they connect throughout the text. With this evidence, I will proceed by stating a few possibilities of meaning that might be observed in the passage and then tied to the rest of the dialogue. Through this explication, it becomes evident that each taxonomic element ties the chosen target text to the entire dialogue by presenting similar structures in other sections as well.
The passage I have chosen to analyze begins on page thirty-seven with “If he ever did …show more content…
The target text begins with narrative frame; Lui describes the personality of his uncle and his functioning in society. Lui portrays his uncle as a selfish man, which is made quite clear in line two when he says, “He [Rameau] thinks of nothing but himself, and the rest of the universe is not worth a pin to him,” (Diderot 37). This gives us, as readers, a sense of the “who” in the story and a small excerpt of background knowledge on not only Rameau, but also a bit about Lui and his thoughts on men of genius. Then, on line five, Lui begins his first speech in the target text, with ten lines of uninterrupted dialogue. He states, “That is what I particularly value in men of genius. They are only good for one thing, and apart from that, nothing,” and continues on to explain that men of genius are indeed necessary, but an entire community of genius men would be a detriment to society (Diderot 37). This speech then feeds into two instances of allusion and intertext: the mention of a Harlequin coat, and Rabelais the monk and his relationship with the Prior. The first instance is allusion to cultural context. Lui speaks on men of genius changing the world, but how they cannot change everything due to the innate