Sébastien Brémond’s Paratexts: Authorship, Genre, and Masculinity

Abstract

In this article, I argue that Sébastien Brémond (1646?–1705?) used his dedicatory paratexts to create a homosocial bond between the author and libertine members of the French faction at Charles II’s court. Coupled with Brémond’s use of the secret history genre and his North African settings that catered to the “Ottomanphilia” of the court during the 1670s, these paratexts situated Brémond as a court insider close to the king, ascribing him with some of the celebrity inherent in that court, and appealing to a wider audience eager to read about the antics of the libertine circle and the king. Looking at these paratexts as a group shows the translatability of the secret history genre across readerships, across political factions, and through time, while the case of Brémond reveals the ways that changing readerships impacted an author’s control over the meanings of their texts and their own authorial persona.