The French word bruit (noise) is a common a metaphor indicating rumor, “buzz,” “the news of the time”—what people are talking about in society. In my current book project, I explore how writers in the 17th and 18th centuries used this and other sonic metaphors to reflect about public discourse. From Corneille to Diderot, creative writers evoked an acoustic vocabulary to imagine how ideas and feelings spread through a population as if at the speed of sound, to understand the (sometimes negative, sometimes positive) role of cacophony and confusion in society, and to think about political relationships as a form of listening. By taking metaphor seriously as a mode of philosophizing about politics and society, my project uncovers what Old Regime writers have to tell us about how to make sense—or how not to make sense—from the noise of our world.