Robert Darnton, Poetry and the Police. Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris, London, England, Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012, 224 p., 18,94 $.
In spring 1749, François Bonis, a medical student in Paris, found himself unexpectedly hauled off to the Bastille for distributing an “abominable poem about the king.” So began the Affair of the Fourteen, a police crackdown on ordinary citizens for unauthorized poetry recitals. Why was the official response to these poems so intense?
In this captivating book, Robert Darnton follows the poems as they passed through several media: copied on scraps of paper, dictated from one person to another, memorized and declaimed to an audience. But the most effective dispersal occurred through music, when poems were sung to familiar tunes. Lyrics often referred to current events or revealed popular attitudes toward the royal court. The songs provided a running commentary on public affairs, and Darnton brilliantly traces how the lyrics fit into song cycles that carried messages through the streets of Paris during a period of rising discontent. He uncovers a complex communication network, illuminating the way information circulated in a semi-literate society.
This lucid and entertaining book reminds us of both the importance of oral exchanges in the history of communication and the power of “viral” networks long before our internet age.
* * *
Sur le site de l'éditeur, on peut aussi découvrir (fichiers audio):
An Electronic Cabaret: Paris Street Songs, 1748–50
A supplement to Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris, by Robert Darnton
Performed by Hélène Delavault and Claude Pavy
* * *
On peut lire sur le site laviedesidees.fr un compte rendu en français de cet ouvrage:
"De la Cour à “la rue". Systèmes de communication à la fin de l’Ancien Régime", par V. Milliot.
"En suivant, par le biais des archives policières, le chemin emprunté par les chansons contestataires, Robert Darnton révèle l’importance des échanges oraux comme vecteurs de circulation des informations et des commentaires politiques. Mais l’oralité n’est que l’un des deux pans, aux côtés de l’écrit auquel elle reste toujours mêlée, du système d’échanges et de circulations d’informations qui irrigue Paris à la veille de la Révolution."