Poetry and the Police [To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.] A Parisian street singer, 1789. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Estampes. d Poetry and the Police communication networks in eigh teenth- century paris robert darnton The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, En gland 2010 Copyright © 2010 by Robert Darnton All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data Darnton, Robert. Poetry and the police : communication networks in eigh teenth- century Paris / Robert Darnton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 674- 05715- 9 (alk. paper) 1. Paris (France)—History—1715–1789. 2. Paris (France)—Politics and government—18th century. 3. Paris (France)—Social conditions— 18th century. 4. Political culture—France—Paris—History—18th century. 5. Communication in politics—France—Paris—History—18th century. 6. Information networks—France—Paris—History—18th century. 7. Political poetry, French—History and criticism. 8. Street music—France— Paris—History and criticism. 9. Police—France—Paris—History—18th century. 10. Political activists—France—Paris—History—18th century. I. Title. DC729.D37 2010 944′.361034—dc22 2010026303 Contents Introduction 1 1 Policing a Poem 7 2 A Conundrum 12 3 A Communication Network 15 4 Ideological Danger? 22 5 Court Politics 31 6 Crime and Punishment 37 7 A Missing Dimension 40 8 The Larger Context 45 9 Poetry and Politics 56 10 Song 66 11 Music 79 12 Chansonniers 103 13 Reception 118 14 A Diagnosis 124 15 Public Opinion 129 Conclusion 140 vi contents The Songs and Poems Distributed by the Fourteen 147 Texts of “Qu’une bâtarde de catin” 158 Poetry and the Fall of Maurepas 162 The Trail of the Fourteen 165 The Popularity of Tunes 169 An Electronic Cabaret: Paris Street Songs, 1748–1750 174 notes 189 index 211 Poetry and the Police Introduction Now that most people spend most of their time exchanging information—whether texting, twittering, uploading, down- loading, encoding, decoding, or simply talking on the tele- phone—communication has become the most imp or tant ac- tivity of modern life. To a great extent, it determines the course of politics, economics, and ordinary amusement. It seems so all- pervasive as an aspect of eve ryday existence that we think we live in a new world, an unprecedented order that we call the “information society,” as if earlier so ci e ties had little con- cern with information. What was there to communicate, we imagine, when men passed the day behind the plough and women gathered only occasionally at the town pump? That, of course, is an illusion. Information has permeated ev ery social order since humans learned to exchange signs. The marvels of communication technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past—even a sense that communication has no his tory, or had nothing of impor- tance to consider before the days of television and the Inter net, unless, at a stretch, the story is extended as far back as da- guerreotype and the telegraph.