Libelle (literary genre)

Perhaps the most numerous and scathing libelles came out of the two decades prior to the French Revolution. Darnton lists five ways in which the libelles of the 1770s and 1780s differed from their ancestors. First, the later libelles differed in their scale. Eighteenth-century libelles were much heftier volumes than their single (or half) sheet predecessors. Some libelles of this period ran as large as thirty-six volumes. The fact that such pamphlets were beginning to be compiled into books increased the longevity of the libelles. Second, the system which distributed the libelles had changed. The publishing industry which circulated eighteenth-century libelles was increasingly vast, and no longer localized. Third, the way in which the libelles attacked public figures had advanced. In eighteenth-century libelles, the sex lives of the public figures who were attacked were contextualized as contemporary history. Fourth, the way that libelles conceptualized their victims had changed. Even when earlier libelles attacked Louis XIV, a sense of respect and even deference was implied in the writings. By the 1770s, the way that the libelles conceptualized Louis XV was much less respectful, and implied that the monarch was a mere womanizer, with no interest in state affairs. Marie Antoinette fared even worse, as the number of pornographic libelles that involved her proliferated into the revolutionary era. Fifth, later libelles seemed to criticize monarchy as a system, whereas early libelles only attacked individual figures. It was implied in the earlier pamphlets that individual figures, such as Mazarin, were responsible for the State’s problems. With the libelles of the later years, however, the attack was focused against the entire governmental system, and monarchy as a whole.