Postal codes: The dark matters of French epistolary fiction, 1669--1789

Studies of epistolary literature of the eighteenth century have often described the letter novel as a genre focused on the construction of voice and interiority, while ignoring the material conditions necessary for the genre's emergence, namely the existence of a sophisticated postal infrastructure. This dissertation claims that the French Post is always present in the epistolary tradition, albeit in varying degrees of visibility. It is only because this infrastructure was part of the landscape of everyday experience that readers could construe epistolary narratives as representations of the period's material realities. The French postal system, however, was not a neutral element in the vast machine of the Ancien regime. It drew praise for allowing rapid and efficient communication, thus enriching the cultural and political fabric of French society from the onset of the Enlightenment to the Revolution. At the same time, because of the state's monopoly over its operations, the Post also functioned as a threatening mechanism of surveillance and voyeurism.;This study begins with an introduction that charts the major changes the system underwent during the final third of the 17th century. The introduction goes on to discuss the first literary reactions to the nascent modern French Post. Chapter one focuses on Montesquieu's Lettres persanes, and discusses the questions of power and secrecy the novel raises. Chapter two explores different reactions to the threat of violated postal privacy through a reading of Graffigny's Lettres d'une Peruvienne and Rousseau's Julie, ou la nouvelle Heloise. Chapter three proposes an analysis of Laclos' Liaisons dangereuses as the final attempt by the epistolary tradition to defy and subvert a corrupt and corruptible postal apparatus. In the conclusion, I examine various possible reasons for the genre's decline in the radically altered postal landscape following the French Revolution.;The dissertation grounds some of the most enduring novels of the long eighteenth century in the material culture and social practices of the period, while exploring ever-pressing questions of privacy, surveillance, and the structures of bureaucratic power.