Unmanning the author: Jean-Joseph Languet de Gergy and anti-fandom in eighteenth-century France

Abstract This article examines the negative reader response to the publication of Jean-Joseph Languet de Gergy’s hagiography of Marguerite-Marie Alacoque in 1729 as an instance of ‘anti-fandom’. It suggests that the mockery of Languet was steeped in intermediality, with pornographic verses and songs crossing over into textile accessories and imagined humiliation rituals. Combining the study of these media with an analysis of Languet’s private papers and the maréchal de Richelieu’s collection of ribbons, the piece looks at the interaction of class and gender in the attacks on this author. It argues that while these assaults were laced with the social prejudices of Parisian high society, hate speech against authors was particularly appealing when it allowed a wide variety of men and women to police the boundaries of manhood. The piece concludes that this spiteful criticism of authors was a mode of socialized reader engagement that became increasingly common in pre-revolutionary France.