feuilleton

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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.{{Cite news |date=November 3, 1900 |title=The Feuilleton: Its Effect Upon Journalism in France |pages=7 |work=The Buffalo Commercial |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/82910143/the-feuilleton-its-effect-upon/ |access-date=2021-08-06}} 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 Apres 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". [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.176552/page/n86/mode/1up?view=theater 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 of Russia.{{Cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3219943|jstor=3219943|title=The Feuilleton: An Everyday Guide to Public Culture in the Age of the Great Reforms|last1=Dianina|first1=Katia|journal=The Slavic and East European Journal|year=2003|volume=47|issue=2|pages=187–210|doi=10.2307/3219943}} Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote feuilletons.{{Cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2492493|jstor=2492493|last1=Fanger|first1=Donald|title=Dostoevsky's Early Feuilletons: Approaches to a Myth of the City|journal=Slavic Review|year=1963|volume=22|issue=3|pages=469–482|doi=10.2307/2492493}}{{Cite book|chapter-url=https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139236867.033|doi = 10.1017/CBO9781139236867.033|chapter = Dostoevsky's journalism and fiction|title = Dostoevsky in Context|year = 2015|last1 = Chances|first1 = Ellen|pages = 272–279|isbn = 9781139236867|editor1-first = Deborah A|editor1-last = Martinsen|editor2-first = Olga|editor2-last = Maiorova}} The feuilletonistic tendency of his work has been explored by Zhernokleyev.{{Cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5699/slaveasteurorev2.99.1.0071|jstor=10.5699/slaveasteurorev2.99.1.0071|doi=10.5699/slaveasteurorev2.99.1.0071|title=Dostoevskii, the Feuilleton and the Confession|year=2021|last1=Zhernokleyev|journal=The Slavonic and East European Review|volume=99|issue=1|pages=71–97|s2cid=234128315}} By 1870 Dostoevsky parodied the feuilleton for its celebration of ephemeral culture.{{Cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3185576|jstor=3185576|last1=Dianina|first1=Katia|title=Passage to Europe: Dostoevskii in the St. Petersburg Arcade|journal=Slavic Review|year=2003|volume=62|issue=2|pages=237–257|doi=10.2307/3185576|s2cid=163868977}}

In America, S. J. Perelman described his comic works, usually reports of his own misadventures, as feuilletons and he defined himself as a feuilletoniste.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_3GuCwAAQBAJ&dq=%22Perelman%22%20%22feuilletoniste%22&pg=PA451 |title= Twentieth Century American Literature |first=David Graham |last=Phillips |publisher=Macmillan Publishers |isbn=9781349164165 |page=451 |date= 1980-11-01 |access-date=2021-10-02 |via=Google Books}}

{{Portal|Journalism}}

• 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

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Category:Newspapers