Chapter VII: The Stage

In what sense Diderot the greatest genius of the century
Mark of his theory of the drama
Diderot's influence on Lessing
His play, _The Natural Son_ (1757)
Its quality illustrated
His sense of the importance of pantomime
The dialogues appended to _The Natural Son_
His second play, _The Father of the Family_ (1758)
One radical error of his dramatic doctrine
Modest opinion of his own experiments
His admiration for Terence
Diderot translates Moore's _Gamester_
On Shakespeare
The Paradox on the Player
Account of Garrick
On the truth of the stage
His condemnation of the French classic stage
The foundations of dramatic art
Diderot claims to have created a new kind of drama
No Diderotian school
Why the Encyclopaedists could not replace the classic
drama
The great drama of the eighteenth century

CHAPTER VIII.
"RAMEAU'S NEPHEW."

The mood that inspired this composition
History of the text
Various accounts of the design of _Rameau's Nephew_
Juvenal's Parasite
Lucian
Diderot's picture of his original
Not without imaginative strokes
More than a literary diversion
Sarcasms on Palissot
The musical controversy

DIDEROT.