Abstract
This article approaches reading by comparing the views of police officers and physicians in eighteenth-century France. Both had a vested interest in readers as part of their professional duties. Contrary to expectations, anxiety about reading cut across the ideological divisions of the Enlightenment. When we situate the police perspective on the dangers of reading in this broader conversation, we see their repressive activities in a new light. What distinguished their views from those of doctors, who targeted reading as a public health problem for medical intervention, was not their conviction that reading required regulation but their understanding of fiction and its effects. The police located the dangers of reading outside the text, not inside it. Reading fueled conversations, speculations, and the production of more texts. By contrast, the doctors warned about the absorptive powers of fiction and moved the danger zone inside the individual's imagination. This analysis suggests that attitudes toward reading revealed doubts about the human capacity for self-government that guided both royal officials and men of science in their diagnosis of social life.
Cet article propose de comparer les perspectives policières et médicales sur la lecture au dix-huitième siècle. Les policiers et les médecins considéraient que la protection des lecteurs faisait partie de leur devoir professionnel. Contrairement à ce que l'on pourrait croire, la lecture suscitait une angoisse que partageait l'ensemble des Lumières. En introduisant le discours policier dans cette conversation plus large, on y apporte un nouveau regard. Ce qui a distingué la police n'était pas sa conviction qu'il fallait surveiller la lecture mais sa théorie de la fiction. Selon elle, le danger se trouvait hors du texte parce que la lecture inspirait la discussion et l'écriture. Du leur côté, les médecins dénonçaient l'absorption à l'œuvre dans la fiction et situaient le danger au fond de l'imagination individuelle. Cette analyse démontre que les débats autour de la lecture étaient liés à l'émergence des principes de subjectivité et de liberté modernes.
