Abstract
<jats:p>The German Bayle edition, its context and afterlife, is a small-scale illustration of the transformation of the encyclopedia genre in the second half of the 18th century. Gottsched elevated the genre to the field of literary criticism and polemics to a greater extent than ever before, using it to assert his poetic principles, aesthetic conception, and views on German literature. The German edition largely retained the structure of the original work, the anti-prejudicial and anti-dogmatic nature of the articles as well as their subversive character, and it anticipated the free expression of opinion of the editors and authors of the Encyclopédie. The additional notes have increased the critical potential of the articles, while often containing biased, erroneous, and sometimes absurd opinions. The edition marks the process during which translations, revisions, improved and reduced versions of the Dictionnaire proliferated, and the number of dictionnaires, Wörterbuchs and lexicons multiplied from the 1750s onwards. Various types and subtypes emerged, and the genre began to shift towards specialized lexicons and universal encyclopedias that focused on subject knowledge and were free from polemics.</jats:p>