Jean-Claude Pingeron, innovative and artistic eighteenth-century polygraph author

This contribution studies the editorial strategies of the polygraph author Jean-Claude Pingeron, promoter of the inventions of his era, in order to consider how ephemeral literature and the rhetoric of improvement shaped each other at the end of the eighteenth century. Examining his output (brochures and articles) reveals the complexity of the paths traversed between manuscripts and printed matter and allows us to properly reacquaint ourselves with the importance of the progressive refinement of “arts utiles et agréables” (useful and pleasant arts) at the heart of his approach.