Robert Darnton
Author of The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History
About the Author
Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and University Librarian, Emeritus, at Harvard University. His honors include a MacArthur Prize, the National Humanities Medal, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Image credit: Robert Darnton, historien américain, dans les bureaux des Éditions Gallimard, à Paris, le 6 septembre 2024
Works by Robert Darnton
The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984) 1,445 copies, 13 reviews
George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century (1997) 114 copies
The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon (Material Texts) (2009) 80 copies, 1 review
Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris (2010) 58 copies, 1 review
A Literary Tour de France: The World of Books on the Eve of the French Revolution (2017) — Author — 42 copies
El coloquio de los lectores. Ensayos sobre autores, manuscritos, editores y lectores (Spanish Edition) (2003) 12 copies
The Widening Circle: Essays on the Circulation of Literature in Eighteenth-Century Europe (The Haney Foundation Series ; (1976) 10 copies
L'Affaire des Quatorze: Poésie, police et réseaux de communication à Paris au XVIIIᵉ siècle (2014) 4 copies
An Early Information Society: News and the Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Presidential Address) 1 copy
The Library in the New Age 1 copy
Associated Works
Histoire du livre et de l'édition: Production & circulation, formes & mutations (2021) — Afterword, some editions — 21 copies
Books and society in history : papers of the Association of College and Research Libraries rare books and manuscripts preconference, 24-28 June, 1980, Boston, Massachusetts (1983) — Contributor — 11 copies
Knowledge Unbound: Selected Writings on Open Access, 2002--2011 (MIT Press) (2016) — Foreword — 6 copies
La police des métiers du livre à Paris au siècle des Lumières: "Historique des libraires et imprimeurs de Paris existans en 1752" de l'inspecteur… (2017) — Preface, some editions — 2 copies
Book History (Volume 20) — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Darnton, Robert
- Legal name
- Darnton, Robert Choate
- Birthdate
- 1939-05-10
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Oxford (B.Phil|1962| D.Phil|1964)
Harvard University (AB|1960) - Occupations
- journalist
cultural historian
founder Gutenberg-e program
academic librarian
professor - Organizations
- Harvard University
Princeton University
International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (president ∙ 1987-1991)
American Historical Association (president ∙ 1999) - Awards and honors
- Légion d'Honneur (Chevalier, 1999)
Gutenberg prize (2004)
Rhodes Scholar (1962)
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Fellow, 1980)
MacArthur Fellowship (1982)
American Philosophical Society (1989) (show all 21)
American Antiquarian Society (1983)
Academia Europaea (1994)
Académie Royale de Langue et de Littérature Françaises de Belgique (1995)
Koren Prize (1973)
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Officier, 1993)
Priz Medicis (1991)
Prix Chateaubriand (1991)
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Chevalier, 1988)
Gutenberg Prize (2004)
Prix France-Ameriques (2011)
Leo Gershoy Prize (1979)
Los Angeles Times Book Prize (1984)
National Humanities Medal (2012)
Del Duca World Prize (2013)
American Printing History Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2005) - Relationships
- Darnton, John (brother)
Darnton, Byron (father) - Short biography
- Robert Darnton was educated at Harvard University (A.B., 1960) and Oxford University (B.Phil., 1962; D. Phil., 1964), where he was a Rhodes scholar. After a brief stint as a reporter for The New York Times, he became a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard. He taught at Princeton from 1968 until 2007, when he became Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library at Harvard. He has been a visiting professor or fellow at many universities and institutes for advanced study, and his outside activities include service as a trustee of the New York Public Library and the Oxford University Press (USA) and terms as president of the American Historical Association and the International Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. Among his honors are a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, a National Book Critics Circle Award, election to the French Legion of Honor, the National Humanities Medal conferred by President Obama in February 2012, and the Del Duca World Prize in the Humanities awarded by the Institut de France in 2013. He has written and edited many books, including The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie (1979, an early attempt to develop the history of books as a field of study), The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984, probably his most popular work, which has been translated into 18 languages), Berlin Journal, 1989-1990, (1991, an account of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of East Germany), and The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France (1995, a study of the underground book trade). His latest books are The Case for Books (2009), The Devil in the Holy Water, or The Art of Slander in France from Louis XIV to Napoleon (2009), and Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris (2010).
http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people... - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- New York, New York, USA
- Places of residence
- Princeton, New Jersey, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
Most people are probably passingly familiar with Franz Anton Mesmer, the eighteenth-century German-born physician and originator of what we now know as “mesmerism,” but the background that Robert Darnton (formerly of Princeton University, but now heads the Harvard University Library) brings to the this book puts mesmerism into not just medical and physical, but also political perspective.
Pre-Revolutionary France was peopled with scientists trying to create new cosmologies to explain the show more mysterious universe around them. “Science had captivated Mesmer’s contemporaries by revealing to them that they were surrounded by wonderful, invisible forces: Newton’s gravity, made intelligible by Voltaire; Franklin’s electricity, popularized by a fad for lightning rods and by demonstrations in the fashionable lyceums and museums of Paris and other miraculous gases of the Charlieres and Montgolfieres that astonished Europe by lifting man into the air for the first time in 1783” (p. 10). It was a time of both experimentation and empiricism – and lots of quackery. Mesmer himself proposed that a superfine fluid pervaded the entire universe, but especially the body. “Individuals could control and reinforce the fluid’s action by ‘mesmerizing’ or massaging the body’s ‘poles’ and thereby overcoming the obstacle, inducing a ‘crisis,’ often in the form of convulsions, and restoring health or the ‘harmony’ of man with nature” (p. 4).
There were, however, institutionalized consensus positions on scientific issues, and the literary and medical journals and professional societies who held them would openly call out Mesmer on his unsubstantiated claims. Mesmer was unconcerned, though. As he said, “It is to the public that I appeal.” The accreditation and approval of official societies meant nothing to him, and he didn’t bother seeking it; rather, he wanted to bring his science to the people and let it speak for itself, and accept it on their own accord.
However, mesmerists didn’t think that mesmerism’s power stopped and started with the body. Instead, they suggested that the health of the body was related to many other things, including mental health, morality, and even the possibility for political change. Darnton details some of the more important people of Mesmer’s inner group, and the splitting into factions that eventually occurred. One of the factions, led by a man named Bergasse, “developed the social and political aspects of his theory – his own ideas about ‘universal morality, about the principles of legislation, about education, habits, the arts, etc.,’” (p. 78). “Carra [another one of the breakaways from Mesmer’s official doctrine] and his friends, especially Bergasse, dealt with the cosmological side of mesmerism by extracting a political theory from the obscure, strictly apolitical pontifications of Mesmer. ‘Political theory’ may be too dignified a term for their distortions of his ideas, but they themselves considered their theories consistent and reasonable, and the police viewed them as a thread to the state” (p. 107).
What was it in mesmerism that appealed to the radical mentality before the Revolution? The mesmerists began to think that the professional, academic journals and societies had formed a kind of anti-democratic coterie whose job it was to marginalize legitimate scientists with valid ideas. In other words, some mesmerists began to see science as something other than what could be described, for lack of a better term, as an “elitist” enterprise. Science had no One Right Answer, and the ridiculing poorly known scientists for their ideas was no better than what Louis XVI was doing; science and political theory – namely, democracy – had collided.
Obscure as it sounded, the ideas of Carra and Bergasse took Mesmer to his logical conclusions: unjust legislation, just like a bad moral disposition, “disrupted one’s atmosphere and hence one’s health, just as physical causes could produce moral effects, even on a broad scale” (p. 108). By construing Mesmer so liberally (and so inaccurately), Carra, Bergasse and others were able to cast a single net around both the world of science, ethics, and revolutionary politics. “By injecting a Rousseauist bias into a mesmerist analysis of the physical and psychological relations among men, Bergasse saw a way to revolutionize France. He would reverse the historical trend of physico-moral causality, reforming institutions by physically regenerating Frenchmen. Improved bodies would improve morals, and better morals would eventually produce political effects” (p. 124).
I just happened to read this soon after finishing George L. Mosse’s “Confronting the Nation: Western and Jewish Nationalism,” which has a few chapters that discuss fascism and its relation to nationalism. In one of those chapters, he pinpoints the French Revolution as the historical event that allows movements like fascism to eventually develop, especially with the mass mobilization of politics. Although Darnton never explicitly suggests this, his book seems to be solid evidence of Mosse’s thesis. Mesmer choosing to ignore scientific consensus and saying “I wish only to convince the public,” his conspiratorial view well-known scientists trying to crush and demolish him, and the collusion of science and politics (especially more race-related “science” as we get into the nineteenth century) all have strong lines of continuity with what we will later call fascism. For anyone interested in how science, ideology and politics can become so easily and terribly entangled, I found this to be a wonderful case study.
But it’s just as good for those interested in the more pedestrian history or sociology of science. Darnton’s background in eighteenth-century European (especially French) history was essential for building the picture that he does, and for building the conclusions that he convincingly reaches. For those interested in something along the same lines but a bit more popular, Darnton’s “The Great Cat Massacre,” which I have also reviewed on this site, is a wonderful and equally insightful collection of essays on early modern French cultural and literary themes. show less
Pre-Revolutionary France was peopled with scientists trying to create new cosmologies to explain the show more mysterious universe around them. “Science had captivated Mesmer’s contemporaries by revealing to them that they were surrounded by wonderful, invisible forces: Newton’s gravity, made intelligible by Voltaire; Franklin’s electricity, popularized by a fad for lightning rods and by demonstrations in the fashionable lyceums and museums of Paris and other miraculous gases of the Charlieres and Montgolfieres that astonished Europe by lifting man into the air for the first time in 1783” (p. 10). It was a time of both experimentation and empiricism – and lots of quackery. Mesmer himself proposed that a superfine fluid pervaded the entire universe, but especially the body. “Individuals could control and reinforce the fluid’s action by ‘mesmerizing’ or massaging the body’s ‘poles’ and thereby overcoming the obstacle, inducing a ‘crisis,’ often in the form of convulsions, and restoring health or the ‘harmony’ of man with nature” (p. 4).
There were, however, institutionalized consensus positions on scientific issues, and the literary and medical journals and professional societies who held them would openly call out Mesmer on his unsubstantiated claims. Mesmer was unconcerned, though. As he said, “It is to the public that I appeal.” The accreditation and approval of official societies meant nothing to him, and he didn’t bother seeking it; rather, he wanted to bring his science to the people and let it speak for itself, and accept it on their own accord.
However, mesmerists didn’t think that mesmerism’s power stopped and started with the body. Instead, they suggested that the health of the body was related to many other things, including mental health, morality, and even the possibility for political change. Darnton details some of the more important people of Mesmer’s inner group, and the splitting into factions that eventually occurred. One of the factions, led by a man named Bergasse, “developed the social and political aspects of his theory – his own ideas about ‘universal morality, about the principles of legislation, about education, habits, the arts, etc.,’” (p. 78). “Carra [another one of the breakaways from Mesmer’s official doctrine] and his friends, especially Bergasse, dealt with the cosmological side of mesmerism by extracting a political theory from the obscure, strictly apolitical pontifications of Mesmer. ‘Political theory’ may be too dignified a term for their distortions of his ideas, but they themselves considered their theories consistent and reasonable, and the police viewed them as a thread to the state” (p. 107).
What was it in mesmerism that appealed to the radical mentality before the Revolution? The mesmerists began to think that the professional, academic journals and societies had formed a kind of anti-democratic coterie whose job it was to marginalize legitimate scientists with valid ideas. In other words, some mesmerists began to see science as something other than what could be described, for lack of a better term, as an “elitist” enterprise. Science had no One Right Answer, and the ridiculing poorly known scientists for their ideas was no better than what Louis XVI was doing; science and political theory – namely, democracy – had collided.
Obscure as it sounded, the ideas of Carra and Bergasse took Mesmer to his logical conclusions: unjust legislation, just like a bad moral disposition, “disrupted one’s atmosphere and hence one’s health, just as physical causes could produce moral effects, even on a broad scale” (p. 108). By construing Mesmer so liberally (and so inaccurately), Carra, Bergasse and others were able to cast a single net around both the world of science, ethics, and revolutionary politics. “By injecting a Rousseauist bias into a mesmerist analysis of the physical and psychological relations among men, Bergasse saw a way to revolutionize France. He would reverse the historical trend of physico-moral causality, reforming institutions by physically regenerating Frenchmen. Improved bodies would improve morals, and better morals would eventually produce political effects” (p. 124).
I just happened to read this soon after finishing George L. Mosse’s “Confronting the Nation: Western and Jewish Nationalism,” which has a few chapters that discuss fascism and its relation to nationalism. In one of those chapters, he pinpoints the French Revolution as the historical event that allows movements like fascism to eventually develop, especially with the mass mobilization of politics. Although Darnton never explicitly suggests this, his book seems to be solid evidence of Mosse’s thesis. Mesmer choosing to ignore scientific consensus and saying “I wish only to convince the public,” his conspiratorial view well-known scientists trying to crush and demolish him, and the collusion of science and politics (especially more race-related “science” as we get into the nineteenth century) all have strong lines of continuity with what we will later call fascism. For anyone interested in how science, ideology and politics can become so easily and terribly entangled, I found this to be a wonderful case study.
But it’s just as good for those interested in the more pedestrian history or sociology of science. Darnton’s background in eighteenth-century European (especially French) history was essential for building the picture that he does, and for building the conclusions that he convincingly reaches. For those interested in something along the same lines but a bit more popular, Darnton’s “The Great Cat Massacre,” which I have also reviewed on this site, is a wonderful and equally insightful collection of essays on early modern French cultural and literary themes. show less
The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History (Penguin Classic History) by Robert Darnton
“We constantly need to be shaken out of a false sense of familiarity with the past, to be administered doses of cultural shock.”
Darnton says that to really appreciate documents and literature from the past we should try and place ourselves in the minds of the people of the time. We should try and view the world through their eyes so that we can have a better understanding of their culture (the way things worked for them).
Darnton has written six essays (and a conclusion) on documents show more that throw up challenges of cultural understanding for the modern reader. He has chosen a period of French History 1697-1784: the Ancien Régime of a more feudal France, although under attack from the growing class of the bourgeoise and the more scientific ideas of the enlightenment, was still a relatively stable period: the French revolution was just around the corner (starting in 1789). Darnton claims that in some respects the documents chosen reveal an alien mentality, that goes beyond our understanding. As modern readers we need to know the context surrounding the documents and the culture of the times, otherwise we may falsely interpret them and get a twisted view of their meaning. The documents chosen are not necessarily controversial, but Darnton is able to use them to make his points, which he does in an entertaining and informative way. Many of us with modern views on animal welfare; and pet lovers to boot, would be horrified by his second essay: titled The Great Cat Massacre, depicting a ritual slaughter of cats, which of course is exactly the point.
The first essay “Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of Mother Goose” compares various folk tales, but here Darnton already finds himself on somewhat dodgy ground, because many of these tales were not written down until much later than when they were in circulation. However by comparing the same tale from different country’s allows the cultural historian to sift out qualities that make them peculiarly French. He is on more solid ground with Workers Revolt: ‘The Great Cat Massacre of Saint-Séverin.’ This is from a document that tells the story of Nicholas Contat a printers apprentice working in appalling conditions in Paris during late 1730’s. The ritualistic killing of cats, by particularly cruel methods was something that happened fairly regularly in many layers of society, but this is not the point of this story for an Eighteenth century French person, who would be much more concerned with a workers revolt. In a ‘Bourgeoise puts his World in Order; The City as Text,’ Darnton takes a description of Montpellier (a large town in South West France) and teases from it those points that make it curious for modern readers. ‘A Police Inspector Sorts His Files’ is an essay about a dossier left by a police inspector, whose job seemed to be to keep records of all known authors/playwrights/pamphleteers during a five year period starting from 1748. What makes the dossier particularly interesting is the police Inspectors personal comments on the authors he was ‘spying on”. The final two essays bring us to the period of the enlightenment. The first of these concerns the new ideas that can be gleaned from a study of Diderot’s Encyclopedie, however It is the second essay ‘Reader respond to Rousseau’ that provides a suitable climax to the book. From a collection of letters written by Jean Ransom: a fan of Jean-Jaques Rousseau he examines a readers response to the celebrated author. Rousseau himself was conscious of how readers should respond to his writing and so he gave them advice on how they should read his work. He wanted to be seen as some sort of divine prophet on the one hand and yet wanted readers also to suspend belief on the other. This essay also provides an insight into early fan worship.
Darnton’s book was published over forty years ago at a time when cultural history was making something of a breakthrough and is now considered an exemplar of the genre. It has as much to say about how we read as it does cultural history and because it is so well written it will be of interest to anyone who reads books for pleasure and/or for information. Valuable lessons perhaps for modern readers, when reading books from an ‘alien culture’; for example those of us who dip into science fiction of the 1950’s and struggle to get past some of the sexism and racism that can be inherent in the genre: an alien culture and it is only 60 years ago. Darnton’s conclusion raises as many questions as possible answers provided when he examines his own methods: our conception of times past is ever changing, but perhaps the cultural historian is better placed with his ability to follow his nose and trust to his sense of smell. You don’t need to know anything about French history to appreciate the ideas thrown up by these essays, you just need to enjoy reading. Great stuff and five stars. show less
Darnton says that to really appreciate documents and literature from the past we should try and place ourselves in the minds of the people of the time. We should try and view the world through their eyes so that we can have a better understanding of their culture (the way things worked for them).
Darnton has written six essays (and a conclusion) on documents show more that throw up challenges of cultural understanding for the modern reader. He has chosen a period of French History 1697-1784: the Ancien Régime of a more feudal France, although under attack from the growing class of the bourgeoise and the more scientific ideas of the enlightenment, was still a relatively stable period: the French revolution was just around the corner (starting in 1789). Darnton claims that in some respects the documents chosen reveal an alien mentality, that goes beyond our understanding. As modern readers we need to know the context surrounding the documents and the culture of the times, otherwise we may falsely interpret them and get a twisted view of their meaning. The documents chosen are not necessarily controversial, but Darnton is able to use them to make his points, which he does in an entertaining and informative way. Many of us with modern views on animal welfare; and pet lovers to boot, would be horrified by his second essay: titled The Great Cat Massacre, depicting a ritual slaughter of cats, which of course is exactly the point.
The first essay “Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of Mother Goose” compares various folk tales, but here Darnton already finds himself on somewhat dodgy ground, because many of these tales were not written down until much later than when they were in circulation. However by comparing the same tale from different country’s allows the cultural historian to sift out qualities that make them peculiarly French. He is on more solid ground with Workers Revolt: ‘The Great Cat Massacre of Saint-Séverin.’ This is from a document that tells the story of Nicholas Contat a printers apprentice working in appalling conditions in Paris during late 1730’s. The ritualistic killing of cats, by particularly cruel methods was something that happened fairly regularly in many layers of society, but this is not the point of this story for an Eighteenth century French person, who would be much more concerned with a workers revolt. In a ‘Bourgeoise puts his World in Order; The City as Text,’ Darnton takes a description of Montpellier (a large town in South West France) and teases from it those points that make it curious for modern readers. ‘A Police Inspector Sorts His Files’ is an essay about a dossier left by a police inspector, whose job seemed to be to keep records of all known authors/playwrights/pamphleteers during a five year period starting from 1748. What makes the dossier particularly interesting is the police Inspectors personal comments on the authors he was ‘spying on”. The final two essays bring us to the period of the enlightenment. The first of these concerns the new ideas that can be gleaned from a study of Diderot’s Encyclopedie, however It is the second essay ‘Reader respond to Rousseau’ that provides a suitable climax to the book. From a collection of letters written by Jean Ransom: a fan of Jean-Jaques Rousseau he examines a readers response to the celebrated author. Rousseau himself was conscious of how readers should respond to his writing and so he gave them advice on how they should read his work. He wanted to be seen as some sort of divine prophet on the one hand and yet wanted readers also to suspend belief on the other. This essay also provides an insight into early fan worship.
Darnton’s book was published over forty years ago at a time when cultural history was making something of a breakthrough and is now considered an exemplar of the genre. It has as much to say about how we read as it does cultural history and because it is so well written it will be of interest to anyone who reads books for pleasure and/or for information. Valuable lessons perhaps for modern readers, when reading books from an ‘alien culture’; for example those of us who dip into science fiction of the 1950’s and struggle to get past some of the sexism and racism that can be inherent in the genre: an alien culture and it is only 60 years ago. Darnton’s conclusion raises as many questions as possible answers provided when he examines his own methods: our conception of times past is ever changing, but perhaps the cultural historian is better placed with his ability to follow his nose and trust to his sense of smell. You don’t need to know anything about French history to appreciate the ideas thrown up by these essays, you just need to enjoy reading. Great stuff and five stars. show less
The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon by Robert Darnton (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) is a dense, detailed and utterly captivating history of French libelous publications in the second half of the 18th century. In pre-Revolutionary France, where publishing was tightly controlled (by 1789 the government employed nearly 200 censors, Darnton reports) these anonymous texts (described as "slanderous, tendentious, wicked, indecent, and very good show more reading", p. 4) were important enough (and sold so well!) to warrant significant attention from those at the highest levels of power in the French government.
Darnton's book, he writes, is designed to "explore this body of literature and the subculture that generated it" (p. 5). He adds "The study of slander in eighteenth-century France is particularly revealing because it shows how a literary current eroded authority under an absolute monarchy and became absorbed in a republican political culture ...." (p. 6-7). He begins by offering close visual and textual readings of four interconnected libels, which enable him to trace the trajectory of the genre and provide a useful case study of the cast of characters, conventions used by the authors, &c.
The examples Darnton chooses couldn't have worked better: stretching across the time period under consideration, they offer a wide range of authorial and typographical choices, and allow him to branch out for interrelated expositions at well-paced intervals. This section of the book is accompanied by excellent complementary illustrations, which enhance the text particularly well.
Following the case studies, Darnton reaches more deeply into various components of the story. His examination of the London colony of French libelers and the efforts by the French authorities to put an end to them reads like a thriller novel, complete with undercover agents, (sometimes double and triple agents); bribes; blackmail efforts; attempts to rewrite English law, &c. Darnton's interest in the smuggling industry (which got the printed libels into France) is obvious, and his enthusiasm is infectious.
But Darnton doesn't limit himself to the stories. His strengths as one of the greatest interdisciplinary historians of the book are on full display here: he offers a close bibliographical reading of the ingredients of libels themselves (basically gossip, despotism, and depravity; also, the pages on plagiarism remind me of Lawrence Lessig's "remix" idea), the publishing industry which brought these libels into being, works toward an understanding of how the libels were received by the reading public (strong conclusions are not possible here given the lack of evidence, but he is able to reach some tentative conclusions), and delves deeply into the political and social history of France to point out the important ways in which these texts served to undermine the Ancien Regime. By attacking the personalities of those in power (up to and including the king and queen themselves), and feeding the hunger of the news-starved people for information, the example of these libels, he concludes, help us "understand how authoritarian regimes can be vulnerable to words and how well-placed words can mobilize the mysterious force known as public opinion" (p. 445).
This book also offers various points of focus for future study: Darnton points out Les Bohemiens, the fascinating novel and utterly forgotten Shandyesque novel written by imprisoned libeler the Marquis de Pelleport (anybody up for translating? [update - never mind, Penn's published it - good for them!)], and his contrast between the English reaction to libel and the French is certainly fascinating, among others.
Not a light read, but well worth the effort.
http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2010/02/book-review-devil-in-holy-water.html show less
Darnton's book, he writes, is designed to "explore this body of literature and the subculture that generated it" (p. 5). He adds "The study of slander in eighteenth-century France is particularly revealing because it shows how a literary current eroded authority under an absolute monarchy and became absorbed in a republican political culture ...." (p. 6-7). He begins by offering close visual and textual readings of four interconnected libels, which enable him to trace the trajectory of the genre and provide a useful case study of the cast of characters, conventions used by the authors, &c.
The examples Darnton chooses couldn't have worked better: stretching across the time period under consideration, they offer a wide range of authorial and typographical choices, and allow him to branch out for interrelated expositions at well-paced intervals. This section of the book is accompanied by excellent complementary illustrations, which enhance the text particularly well.
Following the case studies, Darnton reaches more deeply into various components of the story. His examination of the London colony of French libelers and the efforts by the French authorities to put an end to them reads like a thriller novel, complete with undercover agents, (sometimes double and triple agents); bribes; blackmail efforts; attempts to rewrite English law, &c. Darnton's interest in the smuggling industry (which got the printed libels into France) is obvious, and his enthusiasm is infectious.
But Darnton doesn't limit himself to the stories. His strengths as one of the greatest interdisciplinary historians of the book are on full display here: he offers a close bibliographical reading of the ingredients of libels themselves (basically gossip, despotism, and depravity; also, the pages on plagiarism remind me of Lawrence Lessig's "remix" idea), the publishing industry which brought these libels into being, works toward an understanding of how the libels were received by the reading public (strong conclusions are not possible here given the lack of evidence, but he is able to reach some tentative conclusions), and delves deeply into the political and social history of France to point out the important ways in which these texts served to undermine the Ancien Regime. By attacking the personalities of those in power (up to and including the king and queen themselves), and feeding the hunger of the news-starved people for information, the example of these libels, he concludes, help us "understand how authoritarian regimes can be vulnerable to words and how well-placed words can mobilize the mysterious force known as public opinion" (p. 445).
This book also offers various points of focus for future study: Darnton points out Les Bohemiens, the fascinating novel and utterly forgotten Shandyesque novel written by imprisoned libeler the Marquis de Pelleport (anybody up for translating? [update - never mind, Penn's published it - good for them!)], and his contrast between the English reaction to libel and the French is certainly fascinating, among others.
Not a light read, but well worth the effort.
http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2010/02/book-review-devil-in-holy-water.html show less
A vivid, engaging look at 18th century France. Most of the chapters illuminate the lives of people who live in a particular social stratum. The one chapter where Darnton stumbles a bit is the one on Jean le Rond d'Alembert's introduction to the Encyclopédie, which seems more interested in the interplay between French Enlightenment philosophy and its predecessors. But the chapters on the French version of Little Red Riding Hood (and Darnton wryly pointing out you don't need to rely on show more Freudian symbolism to impute sexuality in the tale, it is blatant in the gruesome original), the titular cat massacre, the policeman's files on writers, and an aristocrat's fan letters to Rousseau are fun to read. show less
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