Robert Darnton
An Early Information Society
[Page 35]
developed in the Renaissance courts. From thepolitical slander of Pietro Aretino onward, this tradition changedand grew, until it culminated in the vast outpouring of libellesunder Louis XV and Louis XVI.53
Thoselibelles in turn provided a frame for the public's perceptionof events during the crisis of 1787-1788, which brought down the OldRegime. That is the second direction in which I would take theargument. But to explain how that happened, I will have to write abook, showing how the crisis was construed, day by day, in all themedia of the time.
SoI am issuing promissory notes instead of arriving at a firmconclusion. But I hope I have said enough to provoke some rethinkingof the connections between the media and politics—even politicstoday. Although I am skeptical about attempts to make history teachlessons, I think the Paris of Louis XV may help us gain someperspective on the Washington of Bill Clinton. How do most Americansorient themselves amidst the political confusion and media blitzes ofthe year 2000? Not, I fear, by analyzing issues, but from our ownvariety of political folklore—that is, by telling stories aboutthe private lives of our politicians, just as the French regaledthemselves with the Vie privée de Louis XV. How can wemake sense of it all? Not merely by reading our daily newspaper butby rereading the history of an earlier information age, when theking's secret was exposed beneath the tree of Cracow and the mediaknit themselves together in a communication system so powerful thatit proved to be decisive in the collapse of the regime.
Robert Darnton is the Davis Professor of European History at PrincetonUniversity. His latest books include Gens de lettres, gens du livre (1992), The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-RevolutionaryFrance (1995), Démocratie, co-edited with Olivier Duhamel (1998), and a chapter in The Darnton Debate: Books and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (1998). He is currently preparing an electronic book on the history of books ineighteenth-century France.
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