When writers gossip: authorial reputation in the literary polemics of the French 1620s *

This study analyses the formation and dissemination of rumours (personal insults, slander, and ad hominem attacks) in the literary and religious polemics of 1620s France involving François Garasse, Théophile de Viau, and Guez de Balzac. Even though slander is constantly condemned as a threat to society, many writers use it, and accuse others of using it, as a powerful means to discredit an enemy. My principal focus is the medium chosen for the expression of gossip, for while polemical works featuring such gossip base their legitimacy on an oral source, written texts are used to formulate and spread the rumour. This initial analysis leads to a study of how authors restage rumours in their pamphlets while simultaneously disguising the ways in which, behind the scenes, they make use of common political or religious networks. I conclude by showing that the circulation of slander and gossip is based on long‐established relationships between writers, on their similar social experiences, and shared acquaintances. The wide circulation of gossip facilitated by the overlapping of the social milieu and the world of print shows how important it is not to neglect this aspect of literary history.