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Abstract
This dissertation, titled, “Self-Writing as Self-Defense: The Literary Role of Judicial Proof in the French Enlightenment,” explores the way in which Louise d’Épinay, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire each used proof in their individual works of self-writing to mount literary self-defenses before the court of public opinion. These works – D’Épinay’s Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant, Rousseau’s Confessions, and Voltaire’s Commentaire historique sur les œuvres de l’auteur de la Henriade, etc. Avec les pièces originales et les preuves – each represent unique literary and rhetorical attempts at self-defense that are emblematic of a larger effort to employ proof in self-writing. Louise d’Épinay, Rousseau, and Voltaire each faced a series of trials and tribulations throughout their lives that led them to construct these literary self-defenses. At the core of these efforts resides a particular attempt to furnish proof that could, in turn, prove discrete elements of each work, such as the factuality of the accounts and the sincerity of the authors’ intentions. In doing so, they each turn to “judicial” forms of proof – witness testimony, documentary evidence – in order to make their case. Each of these works is generically distinct: Montbrillant is an autobiographical novel, the Confessions is the progenitor of modern autobiography, and the Commentaire historique is a peculiar, intergeneric text that most resembles an aristocratic memoir. Proof, thus, is shaped by the practices inherent in each genre, from the inclusion of documents to the insistence upon individual testimony. However, the art of the literary self-defense was by no means a codified form—that is to say, there was no set structure for how judicial proof ought to be employed in order to mount a self-defense in a work of literature; the only rules for judicial proof were those prescribed by and for the Old Regime legal system. These authors thus engaged with the principles and practices of legal proof to defend themselves; however, they also strived to make sense of how such proofs – proofs designed for the court of law – could be translated into a literary self-defense. Thus, they each grappled with problems such as: the value of the singular witness testimony versus multiple witnesses testimonies; and the importance of including authentic documentary evidence versus their own literary freedom to rewrite evidence. This dissertation is divided into three chapters, each a case study on the use of proof in each of the aforementioned texts. Through this study of judicial discursive practices in works of self-writing, I argue that Louise d’Épinay’s Montbrillant, Rousseau’s Confessions, and Voltaire’s Commentaire historique each embody a new attempt by writers to defend themselves before the court of public opinion in the mid-to-late 18th century.