Robert Darnton
An Early Information Society
Index to Illustrations
Figure 1: "L'arbre de Cracovie," c. 1742. The Tree of Cracow as depicted in a satirical print. The figure of Truth, on the far left, pulls on a rope to make the tree go "crack" every time something false takes place beneath it. According to the caption, the falsehoods include an innkeeper who claims he does not water down his wine, a merchant who sells goods for no more than what they are worth, a truthful horse dealer, an unbiased poet, etc. Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), 96A 74336.
Figure 2: A group of nouvellistes discussing the news in the Luxembourg Gardens. Courtesy of the BNF, 88C 134231.
Figure 3: A schematic model of a communication circuit. From Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York, 1995), 189.
Figure 4: Conversation in a café. Courtesy of the BNF, 67B 41693. Here is an excerpt from "Mapping Café Talk" (available at www.indiana.edu/~ahr): Café de Foy, Palais-Royal. "Some said that they had heard the Controller General [Le Peletier de Forts, appointed on June 15, 1726, at the time of the revaluation of the currency] was teetering and might fall. Others said, `Come on, that's nothing more than what you hear in the current songs. It looks very unlikely; and if he left the government, the cardinal [André Hercule Fleury, the dominant figure in the government by June 1726] would leave also. It's nothing more than a false alarm.'"
Figure 5: List of the 29 cafés.
Figure 6: Map of Paris with cafés indicated by number. Map designed by Jian Liu and researched by Sean Quinlan.
Figure 7: Part of a key to the anagrams in Les amours de Zeokinizul, roi des Kofirans: Ouvrage traduit de l'Arabe du voyageur Krinelbol (Amsterdam, 1746), attributed to Laurent Angliviel de La Beaumelle and to Claude-Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon, fils. Photo courtesy of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.
Figure 8: The police lifted this scrap of paper from a pocket of the abbé Guyard when they frisked him in the Bastille on July 10, 1749. The verse was dictated to Guyard by Pierre Sigorgne, a professor in the University of Paris, who had memorized a whole repertory of anti-government songs and poems and declaimed them to his students. This poem, a burlesque edict by the parlement of Toulouse, attacks the recent twentieth tax and various abuses of power, which it attributes to the immorality of the king as exemplified by his affair with the three daughters of the marquis de Nesle. Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, ms. 11690, 1749.
Figure 9: The diffusion pattern of six songs and poems.
Figure 10: Some verses from the song "Qu'une bâtarde de catin," taken from the abbé Guyard by the police when they frisked him in the Bastille. Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, ms. 11690, fols. 67-68, 1749.
Figure 11: The coffee-spilling episode as pictured in a modern-day French-Canadian comic book. Mme. de Pompadour is mistakenly substituted for Mme. du Barry. From Léandre Bergeron and Robert Lavaill, Petit manuel d'histoire de Québec (n.p., n.d. [1970s]), 48.
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Footnotes
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