The ambiguous contempt for “folliculaires”in the eighteenth century

The periodicals that appeared at the beginning of the eighteenth century were violently rejected until the revolutionary period. This hatred is explained in particular by the materiality of these newspapers: the Encyclopedists themselves judged these sheets to be too fragile and too ephemeral to be worth reading. However, this study attempts to show that behind these expressions of contempt, there often lies a genuine fascination for the emerging power of journalism.