Butterworth, E: Poisoned Words: Slander and Satire in Early

Slander and satire were contentious practices in early seventeenth-century France. Seeking to wound, ridicule, destroy or reform, they occupied either side of a dangerous border zone between legitimate and illegitimate criticism. In the first monograph on the subject, Emily Butterworth explores the literary and historical contexts that enabled language to become poisoned and words to wound. The legal background, the many seventeenth-century treatises on slander, early modern linguistic theory, and the satirical, moral, and polemical works of Francois Beroalde de Verville, Marie de Gournay and Jean-Pierre Camus are treated in this wide-ranging and original book. The study of early modern concepts of slander and satire develops significant conclusions on the nature of language, the construction of community and the responsibility of the writer.