Great and Small, Marble and Plaster: The Celebrity Carnival in the Nineteenth-Century French Press

Abstract

At a time when the press was becoming the primary vehicle for visibility, the satirical and literary « petite presse » occupies an important yet generally overlooked position. Run by a team of writer-journalists, this type of publication is naturally well-suited to reporting on literary and artistic life, especially as repressive legislation (in 1835 and then 1852) quickly forced it to abandon the political fray. The « petit journal » developed a particularly recurrent form: the caricatural biography, which appeared early on and spread throughout the field. It offered writers fame through laughter, underpinned both by storytelling and the creation of a ‘caricatural double’ that took its place in a fictional world in keeping with the imagination of social practices.