"Initiators of Discursive Practices": Authorship, Attribution, and Intent in the Debates between Philosophes and Anti- philosophes (1760)

Abstract

In his seminal work, L'ceil vivant, Jean Starobinski theorizes on how pseudonymity--the false attribution of authorship--affects a reader. He writes: Lorsqu'un homme se masque ou se revet d'un pseud-onyme, sentons defies. Cet homme se refuse a nous. Et en revanche voulons savoir. (2) It is probable that Starobinski, a master at looking at pourquoi behind writers (in this case, he is examining Stendhal), meant by in 41nous sentons defies and the author's name by word savoir in nous voulons savoir. Starobinski gestures towards a type of miscommunication between author's intent and reader's desires. Specific miscommunications between readers and writers, as I see it, provide intriguing contexts to examine more general problems in literary criticism and its history. follows is an attempt to show unintended magnitude of Starobinski's comment on pseudonymity both in specific context of Voltaire's 1760 staging of play, Le cafe ou l'Ecossaise, and in larger debates in emerging fields of anonymity, pseudonymity, and attribution studies. Voltaire's use of multiple pseudonyms before and after releasing L'Ecossaise, a comedie serieuse in which Voltaire attacks his enemy Elie-Cathdrine Freron, supports his philosophe friends at a crucial moment in history, and exemplifies his taste for serious comedy and British drama calls into question traditional takes on pseudonymity, anonymity, and attribution by refusing to fit into binary arguments of anonymous vs. attributed, and authorial intent vs. reader's control. As we shall see, a network of competing interests beyond Voltaire's sought to control, manipulate, and even initiate a host of discourses about play. Over next few pages, I will analyze function of pseudonymity within specificity of 1760 France--at peak of a cultural war between philosophes and anti-philosophes, between authors or supporters of Encyclopedic and their numerous detractors. After having underlined individuality of L'Ecossaise, my goal is to then examine Voltaire's use of pseudonyms against backdrop of a more contemporary debate on authorship and anonymity: fierce disagreement between post-structuralist critics and their recent detractors over value, and even possibility, of attributing authorial intent to a literary work. (3) Through a careful reassessment of Michel Foucaulfs concept of attribution in What is an Author?, I will then conclude by offering a meeting point--a place of joint critical investigation--between post-structuralist scholars, sometimes ignore historical specificity of literary reception, and recent attribution scholars, sometimes determine value of a literary work by that work's adherence to or divergence from rigid ideas of literary norms or an author's voice during a given, historical epoch. The study of pseudonymity as a social act--an interpersonal, often conflictual competition to lend meaning to a work between at least two people--merits just as much critical inquiry as attempts to uncover a rational reason--the authorial intent--behind pseudonymic practice. By studying pseudonymity as inherently social, scholars at present could provide a complementary angle to studies that ask: who really wrote this text? or why did he or she use a pseudonym?--studies that still fill pages of academic journals today and that often (and in this critic's opinion, overly) simplify complexities of a writer's various motivations and a reader's multiple processes of interpretation. In France, middle of eighteenth century was a tumultuous period in Republic of Letters. Despite early popular successes of phi losophe works like Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alemberf's Encyclopedic on dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers (1750) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discours sur Torigine et les fondements de l'inegalite parmi des hommes (1754), intellectual climate became decidedly anti-philosophique (4) during second half of 1750s. …