La nouvelle Russie de Pierre le Grand. Un fantasme russe des premières Lumières françaises

In this article, we focus on the image of Russia under Peter the Great in France during the early Enlightenment. We discuss Fontenelle's text Éloge du tsar Pierre Ier, written shortly after the death of this Tsar and commissioned by the French Academy. Our hypothesis is that this text formed the foundation in France of the myth of Peter the Great as the outstanding moderniser, leading the absolute majority of French philosophers after Fontenelle to actually recognise Peter the Great as a true hero of the Enlightenment. Our method is to analyse in detail the rhetorical devices contained in Fontenelle's text and to compare the laudatory image of Peter the Great created by them with the equally laudatory position of other French philosophers, including Voltaire. Our conclusion is that Fontenelle's juxtaposition of Russia before Peter the Great with the new Russia during his reign fits perfectly with the Manichean metaphor of light, typical of the Enlightenment, which must of necessity prevail over darkness.