Expérience politique, livre et trajectoire sociale au xvie siècle : Etienne du Tronchet et ses Lettres missives et familières

• Main Author: Nicolas Schapira
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Groupe de Recherches Interdisciplinaires sur l'Histoire du Littéraire 2017-03-01
• Series: Les Dossiers du GRIHL
• Subjects: 16th century; Du Tronchet (Etienne); epistolarity and politics; France; political history; secretary
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/dossiersgrihl/6628

Political experience, book and social trajectory in the 16th century: Etienne du Tronchet and his Lettres missives et familières.In this paper, we focus on a specific case to explore the modality of political action with books, that has nothing to do with propaganda. The Lettres missives of Estienne Du Tronchet is the first collection of letters published as a book by his own writer. The mainspring of action is not to convince the reader with a discourse, but the capacity of the book to embody some duration - to be considered as resulting from a succession of actions spread over time and open to the future. More generally, this shows a specificity of printed books, which undoubtedly underlies many uses of print in political matters. Our collection of letters is used by its author as an instrument for action at a crucial moment of his secretary career; this book realizes Du Tronchet's experience in the sense of "realizing a gain": it converts one specific experience into some readiness to act in the future.