L’Imaginaire médiatique. Histoire et fiction du journal au XIXe siècle by Guillaume Pinson (review)

Taking as its subject the imaginaire médiatique, Guillaume Pinson’s study mines a vast array of nineteenth-century representations of the press, exploring the various discourses which document the inexorable rise of the newspaper in this period. His aim is an ambitious one: “quelle histoire du journal la France du XIX^e siècle s’est-elle racontée?” (10). And yet Pinson’s is a subtle history, careful to highlight the many impulses which characterize representations of the media while teasing out a wealth of overlapping motifs, tropes, and scenarios employed in the depiction of the press. The media imaginary emerges in the sheer diversity of discourses given to the discussion, analysis, and representation of the newspaper: “Essentiellement, il s’agit de se demander comment les contemporains des débuts de l’ère médiatique ont perçu, imaginé, ressenti, mis en scène leur entrée dans la ‘civilisation du journal’” (10). Referencing the recent Civilisation du journal. Histoire culturelle et littéraire de la presse française au XIX^e siècle, edited by Dominique Kalifa, Philippe Régnier, Marie-Ève Thérenty, and Alain Vaillant, the study makes an important contribution to a rich vein of contemporary scholarship, at pains to stress the centrality of the newspaper in nineteenth-century French culture and sensitive to the innumerable connections between literature and journalism in the period.

L’Imaginaire médiatique also draws on the traditions of sociocriticism and, in particular, the work of Marc Angenot. The influence of such scholarship is evident in Pinson’s impressive breadth: the study explores a vast range of sources, from works of fiction and memoirs penned by leading nineteenth-century journalists to histories of the press and examples of panoramic literature. Canonical texts are treated alongside lesser-known works. Analyzing an array of novels of journalism, for example, the study highlights the fact that Balzac’s often-discussed Illusions perdues is far from alone in its depiction of that crucial nineteenth-century narrative: the state of l’écrivain-journaliste. Indeed, Pinson’s analysis probes the complex history of such thematic concerns, isolating the various stages in the evolution of the novel of journalism and, in particular, contrasting novels of l’écrivain-journaliste with later fictions of the reporter such as those of Jules Verne and Gaston Leroux. This approach aims to reintegrate literary works into their discursive context and this objective proves highly effective with regard to such texts as Maupassant’s Bel-Ami and Zola’s L’Argent, novels which explore the connections between high finance, the press, and politics. Indeed, Pinson demonstrates how media corruption plays a crucial role in late nineteenth-century debates on the press: in its discussion of Angenot’s notion of la publicistique, for example, the study documents a critical strand of French discourse aimed at denouncing the vénalité of the press and evokes the work of such lesser-known figures as Eugène Soleilhac, Ignace Druhen, André Lajeune-Vilar, and Georgian author, Niko Nikoladzé, invited—as Pinson notes—to assess the “état des lieux de la presse française” (151). Nikoladzé’s response, entitled La Presse de la décadence, is emblematic of a line of critical enquiry deeply pessimistic in its depiction of the media.

The study, then, is highly effective in its mastery of detail, considering a number of nineteenth-century debates on the nature of journalism and exploring fictional journalists from Lucien de Rubempré to Tintin. The media imaginary ultimately proves a diffuse notion, however: no single, unifying portrait of journalism emerges from Pinson’s research. Rather, the critic’s subtle approach to historical and literary material allows for the appreciation of a variety of competing histories of the nineteenth-century French press, an array of narratives which interweave and evolve over the course of the century.