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  • Decadence, Radicalism, and the Early Modern French Nobility: The Enlightened and Depraved by Chad Denton
  • Michael R. Lynn
Decadence, Radicalism, and the Early Modern French Nobility: The Enlightened and Depraved. By Chad Denton. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. Pp. 161. $80.00 (cloth).

Even a quick perusal of contemporary criticisms of the French nobility in the eighteenth century reveals a group of people purportedly engaging in a wide variety of wild and unruly behaviors. A slightly longer look at a novel like Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les liaisons dangereuses (1782) or discussions surrounding the behavior of Queen Marie Antoinette could leave an impression of the French aristocracy as entirely debauched and rife with increasingly libertine attitudes. Chad Denton explores this libertinage in his book Decadence, Radicalism, and the Early Modern French Nobility: The Enlightened and Depraved, with an eye toward examining how and why nobles may have adopted such behaviors.

Denton begins with a short introductory chapter in which he explores the idea of libertinage and situates his work within the relevant historical literature. Denton examines both the work on nobility in general and scholarly explorations of sexually libertine behavior. The first substantive chapter examines the nature of identity within the early modern French nobility. Denton argues that over the course of the early modern period the foundations on which nobles created their identity shifted from military service to cultural merit. This new focus on merit centered on the ability to display proper intellectual acumen and social mores. The typical education for nobles [End Page 302] lent itself to achieving the proper status in the milieu of Versailles, where wit ruled alongside the Sun King. As France transitioned from the age of Louis XIV and into the Regency, however, libertinage found full expression as nobles asserted their personalities and challenged the culture of absolutism.

The second chapter expands on what it meant to be an aristocratic libertine. When the Sun King was under the influence of his second wife, the devout Madame de Maintenon, expressing improprieties was increasingly frowned upon, although this did not entirely stop people from engaging in debauchery or antireligious behavior. Denton notes that people viewed the younger generation of nobles as particularly inclined to forsake religious orthodoxy in favor of libertinism. This led to something of an ongoing, factionalized dispute between the dévots, who held firmly to Catholic mores, and the libertines. Denton points to the role of “philosophical” books, a category that included books deemed by the royal censors as pornographic, as an indication of the growing shift in mentalities. Works like Thérèse philosophe and the writings of the Marquis de Sade pushed the boundaries of morality, Denton argues, especially when combined with an increasingly skeptical view of the world.

To make this point more forcefully, Denton turns in the next two chapters to case studies of sodomy and adultery. He argues that sodomy, by which Denton generally limits himself to mean same-sex intercourse, was the ultimate example of moral defiance due to the legal and social prescriptions against it. Nonetheless, intellectual and cultural challenges, combined with purposeful obfuscation through linguistic disguises (such as referring to sodomy more generally as “debauchery” or “infamy”), allowed libertines to find a space to express their views and their sexuality. In this context, sodomy became a form of revolt. Class mattered, Denton notes, with noble behavior often ignored or downplayed, while members of the third estate (the working class) could receive a death penalty for similar behavior.

Adultery presented a different problem for nobles. After all, the king had an official royal mistress. Denton notes that Louis XV’s mistress Madame de Pompadour may have personally selected the other women with whom Louis had affairs in order to ensure that none of them could overshadow her own position. Such institutionalized adultery at the very top of society would seem to open the door for similar behavior at all levels. In the eighteenth century it became possible for noble couples to live apart, and noble women were less likely to be punished for adulterous behavior than was previously the case. Critiques of adultery appeared at the same time, however, especially for...

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