ABSTRACT
Denis Diderot was certainly familiar with the lettres de cachet, not only for purposes of censure, of which he was a victim when he was imprisoned in Vincennes, but also for familial situations. Although he would understandably fear the threat of another lettre de cachet, he could still discover a method of criticizing the hypocrisy of religion as well as the repression of the ancien regime through a more subversive form of writing, especially in La Religieuse. Diderot’s relatively short period of incarceration certainly informed his subsequent writing. Instead of stating overtly the term lettre de cachet in an already controversial text such as La Religieuse, Diderot couches this prominent agency of the plot by using the metaphor of the written letters. Finally, Diderot’s last play, Est-il bon? Est-il mechant? mentions briefly some possible uses of a lettre de cachet.
