Libelle (literary genre)

The French word is derived from the Latin , for "small book". Although originally it was used to describe pamphlets in general, it became primarily applicable to the genre of brief and defamatory attacks on pre-revolutionary French public figures. The 1762 edition of the dictionary published by the defines the as an "offensive work". The publishers of were known as . ==Format and style==

Libelles varied widely in format and style, with some early consisting of either a half-sheet or a single sheet in octavo format. Some later , published in the eighteenth century for example, were book-length, or even ran into multiple volumes. Regardless of their format, the were cohesive in their overblown and sensationalist style; they were full of wordplay, and often employed literary techniques such as metaphor. The were defiant against authority, and spoke out against prominent individuals. ==History==

were invariably of a political nature, both defamatory and subversive. They proliferated during times of political crises, from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. During the Fronde, the majority of were directed against Cardinal Mazarin, the chief minister of France. These were referred to as . They ridiculed Mazarin for a wide variety of things, including his low birth, his luxurious proclivities and speculated on his erotic liaison with the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria. One of the most famous of these characterized Mazarin as follows: These excited concerns on the part of the government. Presumably alarmed by the seditious possibilities of the , the Parlement of Paris issued an ordinance against , declaring that anyone caught producing such pamphlets would be hanged. This ran the business of underground, and many relocated to Holland—or affected to on the title pages; there they continued to publish their slander. The fact that such pamphlets were beginning to be compiled into books increased the longevity of the . • Second, the system which distributed the had changed. The publishing industry which circulated eighteenth-century was increasingly vast, and no longer localized. Marie Antoinette fared even worse, as the number of pornographic that involved her proliferated into the revolutionary era. • Fifth, later seemed to criticize monarchy as a system, whereas early 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 of the later years, however, the attack was focused against the entire governmental system, and monarchy as a whole. ==Notes==