Common Sense is political propaganda: a form of persuasive non-fiction. Despite the rhetorical elements of such texts, one often sees works in this genre that contain some dramatization of real-world events, in the hopes that heightened emotion will inspire readers to take action regarding some political or social issue. For Paine, in Common Sense, the issue at hand is the British monarchy and its authoritarian, unjust treatment of American colonists.
Paine intended Common Sense to be distributed in pamphlet form. This method for dispersing political propaganda was, at the time—and is still at times today—utilized when the author wished to target the largest audience possible. Given the severity of British oppression in the American colonies, Paine saw one of the only ways forward to be persuading the largest possible number of literate citizens of his viewpoint. Thus not only the genre but the form of this work, and its means of dissemination, are crucial to understanding authorial intent and political impact.
The French term for this particular literary genre is libelle, referencing political propaganda pamphlets that target a specific political figure. Just as Paine wrote Common Sense to undermine British monarchical authority, so did revolutionaries in France write libelles to undermine French monarchical authority in the late eighteenth century.
