Logan J. Connors is Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami. His next research project investigates connections between theater and the military in France and its colonies from 1680 to 1815.

• AcknowledgementsList of illustrationsIntroduction: decision makers, doctes and theatre1. Culture wars: philosphes and anti-philosophes in eighteenth-century France2. The anatomy of a crime: polemics, pamphlets and preconditioning3. A critical performance: Les Philosophes hits the boards4. Parterre and balcony, spectator and reader: Palissot’s dramaturgical strategies5. Pamphlets on the stage: Voltaire’s riposte philosophique6. Spectators or readers? Voltaire’s ‘public’ concerns in L’Ecossaise7. The affair continues: critical uncertainty in eighteenth-century France8. (Re)Creating the event: performance criticism as intellectual war9. Following the event: new definitions of theatre and criticism10. Aftermath: theatre and polemics in pre-Revolutionary FranceConclusion: le cri publicBibliographyIndex

Eighteenth-century specialists are well acquainted with the controversies surrounding the premieres of Charles Palissot's Les Philosophes and Voltaire's Le Caffé; ou, L'Écossaise at the Comédie-Française in 1760. […] Connors offers new perspectives on the conflict by delving deeply into the pamphlet literature and periodical reviews of the affair. For example, there is an insightful analysis of the short pamphlet Les Philosophes manqués by André-Charles Cailleau, written in the form of a play but never intended for the stage, which demonstrates how participants in the controversy appealed to both readers and spectators.[…] [T]his book is a welcome addition to recent interdisciplinary approaches to the interplay of public theatre and political culture in Old Regime and Revolutionary France.- French Studies