Slanders, in a literary sense, local fools holding a gent up (8)
I believe the answer is:
asperses
'slanders' is the definition.
('asperse' can be a synonym of 'slander')
'holding a gent up' is the wordplay.
'holding' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'a' becomes 'per'.
'gent up' becomes 'asses' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'per' put within 'asses' is 'ASPERSES'.
'in a literary sense local fools' acts as a link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for asperses that I've seen before include "Falsely accuses" , "What critic does" , "Ass peers badly and slanders" .)