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The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon
Robert Darnton
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Description for The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon
paperback. Robert Darnton explores the scandalous literature of libel and the colorful lives of libelers in eighteenth-century France. By doing so he shows how an ideological current eroded authority under the Old Regime and became absorbed in a new, more radical, political culture under Robespierre. Series: Material Texts. Num Pages: 552 pages, 47 illus. BIC Classification: 1DDF; 3JF; HBJD; HBLL; HBTV2. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 235 x 155 x 38. Weight in Grams: 912.
Slander has always been a nasty business, Robert Darnton notes, but that is no reason to consider it a topic unworthy of inquiry. By destroying reputations, it has often helped to delegitimize regimes and bring down governments. Nowhere has this been more the case than in eighteenth-century France, when a ragtag group of literary libelers flooded the market with works that purported to expose the wicked behavior of the great. Salacious or seditious, outrageous or hilarious, their books and pamphlets claimed to reveal the secret doings of kings and their mistresses, the lewd and extravagant activities of an unpopular foreign-born ... Read more
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Format
Paperback
Publication date
2011
Publisher
University of Pennsylvania Press United States
Number of pages
552
Condition
New
Series
Material Texts
Number of Pages
552
Place of Publication
Pennsylvania, United States
ISBN
9780812221718
SKU
V9780812221718
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1
About Robert Darnton
Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library.
Reviews for The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon
"Darnton's bravura demonstration of how Old Regime slander was grafted onto the main stem of Revolutionary political culture is one of the highlights of his engaging book. . . . The libellistes seem to have been most effective when their work fitted in with wider political and ideological trends. But their writings certainly complicated and dramatized questions about the limits ... Read more