ABSTRACT
Polemic is more often marked, however, by the arousing of emotions within the reader by means of the imagery within which the message is encased. The political polemic of the late nineteenth century in France aimed mainly at the emotions rather than at the intellect. In order to 'place' the examples of polemic which the people will be studying in this volume, it will perhaps be worth pinpointing some of the issues that so divided Frenchmen in this period, and some of the attitudes that were taken up by public figures. That antisemitism was not the main feature in the politics of the Affair, despite its prevalence in popular polemic, is shown by the number of antisemites who ended up as defenders of Dreyfus. Some of the intellectuals eschewed polemic; those who did not found themselves inexorably caught up in the simplistic formulae of the polemic of their period.
