The narrator of Denis Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew describes the title character as “a mixture of the lofty and the sordid, of good sense and unreason” (7). Much the same could be said of this engaging, humorous, and wandering text, which was written in the 1760s and revised in the 1770s. For those unfamiliar with Rameau’s Nephew, the work takes the form of a dialogue between ME—a character not to be too closely associated with Diderot—and HIM—the fictional, frenetic, and idiosyncratic nephew of the famous composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. Part social commentary, part philosophical treatise, and part artistic manifesto, Rameau’s Nephew covers a wide range of philosophical and aesthetic conundrums, locating them in the rich fabric of Parisian life. This multimedia edition effectively guides the reader through the fluid ups-and-downs of Diderot’s complex narrative, and it will be an asset to scholars and students alike.

Thanks to its wide-ranging, conversational format, Rameau’s Nephew is particularly well suited to an interactive edition. Hyperlinks transport the reader to endnotes containing 100 illustrations, 18 musical pieces, and over 250 annotations. History, art history, music, literature, and philosophy scholars could all draw on the ideas in this text, and the multimedia components of this edition bring this generic flexibility to the fore. Additionally, Rameau’s Nephew contains references to a dense network of actors, socialites, and artists; the editor Marian Hobson’s many annotations enrich and deepen the social context of the piece, letting the reader in on all the eighteenth-century gossip.

Kate Tunstall and Caroline Warman’s translation is gracefully executed. It maintains the variable, unconstrained flow of the original French, while employing diction and syntax appropriate to modern audiences. The text is, in turns, funny, tragic, ironic, and profound, and the translation maintains these tonal shifts in a seemingly effortless manner. While the multimedia aspect of this edition is certainly appealing, having such a clear, faithful, and readily available English version is worthwhile in its own right. I can see this translation getting quite the workout in the classroom.

The music, which was chosen to provide less well-known samples of French and Italian music, can be accessed through a YouTube link, a QR code, or the Open Book site, and the performances by the Conservatoire national supérieue de musique et de danse de Paris are beautifully recorded. As someone without a musical background, I enjoyed having the chance to hear the types of music that ME and HIM discuss so freely, but I also found that the annotations for these extracts were somewhat technical. For example, the annotation on Jean-Joseph Mouret’s Les Amours de Ragonde (Piece 11) reads, “After a brief introduction emphasizing the key of E major, the first part of the air, which is played twice over, is completed by a second, slower part, starting in the key of A major but coming back to the main key” (128). This is probably valuable information for someone with musical knowledge, but I found myself wishing for a more explicit sense of how these technical attributes connected to the larger context of Rameau’s Nephew.

This points to a, perhaps minor, yet recurrent critique: the lack of clarity as to this edition’s intended audience. The notes mostly focus on historical information instead of interpretative interventions, and they frequently suggest that scholars consult Hobson’s annotated French version for a more in-depth discussion of certain themes, implying that this edition was intended to be broadly accessible. Yet there are other instances when the annotations seem oriented to readers with specialized knowledge. For example, in note 150, Hobson states, “The extended nature of Hegel’s commentary [on Rameau’s Nephew] has not been generally recognized,” and several subsequent notes are devoted to rectifying this perception and assume that readers have some familiarity with Hegel. In order to make this a truly interdisciplinary text and integrate these diverse fields of commentary, it would have been helpful if Hobson had explained how the specialized material fits into the larger picture of the work and its study across different disciplines.

That said, it is highly possible for both beginners and advanced scholars to gain insight from this edition, and its benefits far outweigh its limitations. I applaud the creators’ innovative approach, and I would welcome multimedia editions of other Enlightenment texts, given the format’s capacity to convey the versatility of eighteenth-century literature.