Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris

"We are given a vivid sense of how songs were circulated and performed on the streets of Paris...Darnton has opened up another rich vein of research in the eighteenth century." -Times Literary Supplement

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 o...