Semaine 7: Change and Continuity of Storytelling, from Gutenberg to Dumas
Hello once more my readers!
When I said the “literary industry” in France last week, I don’t solely talk of books. There are two other major mediums of storytelling massively popular in France by the time The Count of Monte Cristo is published: theatre and the “roman-feuilleton” (serialized novel). Printed books in France were quickly adopted and crafted en masse after the advent of the Gutenberg printing press in 1454, yet such books remained too expensive for the average peasant or worker. The situation changes during the 17th century Renaissance as theatre becomes more sophisticated; with growing numbers of acting troupes, the formation of playwrights like Molière as household names, and the construction of theatre-houses across France, storytelling would become more open to the masses.
Yet even acting was confined to the geographic area around the most prominent theatres in Paris. It would take another century, during the 18th century Enlightenment, that journals begin to circulate over further distances to a greater demographic. Though initially the domain of ideas and opinions on government, religion, and science, these journals often faced such harsh censorship that many had to run local stories and gossip columns to remain profitable to produce. Though the censorship of the press eased up in the decades after the White Terror that came with the Bourbon Restoration, the tradition of selling columns to writers to make either one-off stories or serialized novels was long-established in the printing business, itself largely owned by the ascending bourgeois, nouveau-riche class.
It is in this context that Dumas has his experiment with storytelling. As you all know from the first week, he wrote a couple plays in collaboration with other writers before getting the recognition of the Parisian audience for his work on Henri III et sa cour. The most obvious impact of his success with this play in The Count of Monte Cristo is his engagement with the Romance genre intertwining history and adventure. Beyond that, however, we also see some of Dumas’ own beliefs on the audience that delighted in his works, that being the aristocracy and upperclassmen, seep into the story. When Dantès finally settles in Paris to set his plan for revenge in motion, the topic of discussing and seeing theatre recurs among the wealthy families of his framers to such an extent it becomes a part of their social identity, besides hosting and attending parties. Dumas’ treatment of these characters as illegitimate members of higher culture is especially poignant when also considering the continued enjoyment of an old medium of literature like theatre by an old-standing social class like the nobility- a class Danglars, Fernand, and de Villefort were historically never part of yet aspired so strongly to be!
Evidently then, Dumas’ own experience with playwriting both formed his style of Romanticist writing as well as reinforced his negative conception of the wealthier and landed classes. This would be much more apparent with the hindsight of knowing his republican background, but remember: Dumas’ intention with writing a serialized novel was to strongly play the element of suspense to keep his wealthier, more learned readers engaged. When the story began to be printed in books after its completion in the Journal des Débats, the suspense was no longer as distracting, and those who weren’t wealthy enough to afford a journal to consistently subscribe to for the purposes of reading The Count of Monte Cristo- the urban working classes- would be the primary demographic reading the story through the cheaper book rather than the French elite.
This week involved my study of the history of the literary industry in France all the way up to Dumas, but next week we’ll go further. We will be seeing how literature continued to evolve past books, theatre and the serialized novel after the “fin de siècle” and into the modern day, and- what I’m most intrigued to study- the impact of The Count of Monte Cristo on modern stories and storytelling!
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