Feuilletons

A ''feuilleton'' (; a diminutive of , the leaf of a book) was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the latest fashions, and epigrams, literary charade, charades and other literary trifles.

The term ''feuilleton'' was invented by the editors of the French ''Journal des débats''; Julien Louis Geoffroy and Bertin the Elder, in 1800. The ''feuilleton'' has been described as a "talk of the town", and a contemporary English-language example of the form is the "Talk of the Town" section of ''The New Yorker''.

In English newspapers, the term instead came to refer to an installment of a serial story printed in one part of a newspaper.

History

The ''feuilleton'' was the literary consequence of the Coup of 18 Brumaire (Dix-huit-Brumaire). A consular edict of January 17, 1800, made a clean sweep of the revolutionary press, and cut down the number of Paris newspapers to 13. Under the Consulate, and later on, the Empire, ''Le Moniteur Universel'', which served as a propaganda mouthpiece for Napoleon Bonaparte, basically controlled what the other twelve Parisian publications could run. Julien Louis Geoffroy found that what might not be written in an editorial column might appear with perfect impunity on a lower level on the ''rez-de-chaussée'', the "ground floor" of a journal. Geoffroy started the first ''feuilleton'' in the ''Journal des Débats''. The idea caught on at once. The ''feuilleton'', which dealt ostensibly with literature, the drama and other harmless topics, but which, nevertheless, could make political capital out of the failure of a book or a play, became quite powerful under the Napoleonic nose. The original ''feuilletons'' were not usually printed on a separate sheet, but merely separated from the political part of the newspaper by a line, and printed in smaller type.

Geoffroy's own ''feuilleton'' dealt with the theatre as he was a trenchant drama critic. By the time of his death in 1814, several other feuilletonists had made their mark, with Janin taking over from him. ''Feuilletonists'' featured in other papers included Théophile Gautier, Paul de St. Victor, Edmond de Biéville, Louis Ulbach and Francisque Sarcey, who occupied the "ground floor" of the ''Temps''. Adolphe Adam, Hector Berlioz, and Coutil-Blaze wrote music-laden ''feuilletons''. Babinet, Louis Figuier and Meunier focused on science. Bibliographical ''feuilletons'' were done by Armand de Pontmartin, Gustave Planche, and Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve.

However, the ''feuilleton'' would become a phenomenon only with the appearance of serialised novels. For instance, Alexandre Dumas' ''The Count of Monte Cristo'', ''The Three Musketeers'' and '' Vingt ans après'' all filled the "ground floors" of the ''Siècle''. Eugène Sue's '' Mystères de Paris'' ran in the ''Débate'', and his ''Juif Errant'' (''The Wandering Jew'') appeared in the ''Constitutionnel''. In ''The World of Yesterday'', Stefan Zweig wrote of how the ''Neue Freie Presse''s ''feuilleton'', "in the lower half of the front page, separated sharply from the ephemera of politics and the day by an unbroken line that extended from margin to margin", had become the leading arbiter of literary culture in ''fin de siècle'' Vienna, such that a ''feuilleton'' writer's "yes or no... decided the success of a work, a play, or a book, and with it that of the author".Zweig, Stefan, ''The World of Yesterday'', p.85 (1953)

The ''feuilleton'' was a common genre in Russia, especially during the government reforms of Alexander II. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote ''feuilletons''. The ''feuilletonistic'' tendency of his work has been explored by Zhernokleyev. By 1870 Dostoevsky parodied the feuilleton for its celebration of ephemeral culture.

In America, S. J. Perelman described his comic works, usually reports of his own misadventures, as ''feuilletons'' and he defined himself as a ''feuilletoniste''.

See also

* Causerie
* Op-ed
* Column (newspaper)
* Serial novel
* Sunday Supplement
* ''The Third Culture'' (1995), book that inspired several German newspapers to integrate scientific reports into their ''feuilleton'' sections

References

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