{"id":11771,"date":"2010-06-29T15:08:49","date_gmt":"2010-06-29T13:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mono-1en-2502"},"modified":"2010-06-29T15:08:49","modified_gmt":"2010-06-29T13:08:49","slug":"french-dissing-the-scandalous-literature-that-liberated-a-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/2010\/06\/29\/french-dissing-the-scandalous-literature-that-liberated-a-country\/","title":{"rendered":"French dissing, the scandalous literature that liberated a country"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRobert Darnton has spent many years nudging us toward an
\n\tunderstanding of this reality. Most recently he’s instructed us that
\n\t18th-century French publishing had a well-known category, libelles<\/em>,
\n\twhich covered many books that delighted newly literate readers by
\n\tundermining the authority of the monarchy and the Church.<\/p>\n

\tLibelles<\/em>
\n\thelped create the demand for liberty. They were a major factor in the
\n\tmonarchy’s collapse. On shaky moral grounds, they founded French press
\n\tfreedom.<\/p>\n

\tIn the 18th century, libel was a French industry. The
\n\tbooks Darnton explores sometimes told the truth and sometimes spread
\n\tvicious lies. Still, for decades they provided the only available
\n\tinformation on the great public figures of France. Newspapers came late
\n\tto France, much later than to Germany and Britain, because the monarchy
\n\tdidn\u2019t allow them. Paris got its first daily in 1777; Leipzig had one in
\n\t1660.<\/p>\n

\tFrench education was over-producing frustrated writers. To
\n\tbe published lawfully in France a book had to be scrutinized in advance
\n\tby a team of 200 censors in a government department. (Being French, they
\n\tobjected to failures of style as well as offences against the regime.)<\/p>\n

\tFrench
\n\tpublishers escaped censorship by moving to foreign cities and smuggling
\n\thome their rebellious books. London became a busy centre of French
\n\twriting and publishing, much of it defamatory.<\/p>\n

\tUnsurprisingly, the
\n\tfavourite victim of libellers was Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI.
\n\tShe was a foreigner from a traditional enemy, Austria, therefore a
\n\tsuspect in any international plot. She was a spendthrift and a gambler,
\n\ttherefore a burden on the royal treasury. Early in her marriage the king
\n\twas said to be impotent; the libellers claimed she looked everywhere
\n\telse for sexual satisfaction.<\/p>\n

\tShe received, as Darnton says, far
\n\tmore than her share of calumny: “The avalanche of defamation that
\n\toverwhelmed her between 1789 and her execution on October 16, 1793, has
\n\tno parallel in history.” In her last years she was the subject of about
\n\t150 books, some of them excoriating her “in language so extreme as to
\n\tdefy belief.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Link<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Darnton has spent many years nudging us toward an understanding of this reality. Most recently he’s instructed us that 18th-century French publishing had a well-known category, libelles, which covered many books that delighted newly literate readers by undermining the authority of the monarchy and the Church. Libelles helped create the demand for liberty. They … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"koromo_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-blog","koromo-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/11771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/11771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}