ABSTRACT
Proponents of an essentialist definition of literature have sought to establish a set of stable criteria that must be met in order for a particular piece of writing to count as literature. Others have proposed a functional definition that sees literature as whatever kind of narrative readers and listeners from time to time and place to place have recognized as literature. This chapter argues that literature intervened in and even cocreated that social imaginary within which the Declaration of Rights came into being. The head figure of the Physiocratic movement was the court physician Francois Quesnay, who was highly critical, not only of fictional literature but also of the mercantilism of his day. The sheer number of figures active as both politicians and writers invites an examination of the interrelation between politics and literature in the revolutionary decade.
