Starting from the fundamental epistemological shifts characterising the seventeenth century, this book explores the re-conceptualization of the notion of truth and asks how factuality, along with other truth-carrying discourses, was appropriated by a range of texts to generate credibility. Tracing the numerous ways in which authors such as John Dunton, Charles Gildon, François Perreaud, Thomas Brown, or Joseph Addison and Richard Steele deliberately toyed with the truth effects generated by their participation in discourses such as proto-science, medicine, philosophy, law and religion,...