| Summary: | This study is focused on a cosmopolitan group of both famous and less famous radical intellectuals from both sides of the Atlantic—some of them of popular origin and self-educated—all linked by relations of personal friendship or at least col- laboration or contiguity: Thomas Paine, Joel Barlow, Nicolas de Bonneville, John Oswald, Joseph Ritson. The analysis of the language strategies they used to attempt a democratization of the universal communication that had been until then kept among the educated members of the Republic of letters—in particular insofar as the high tradition of the critique of revealed religion was concerned, considered here as an absolutely crucial point—centers on the themes of political etymology and of confidence in the performative energy of decoded words.
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