Roman et théâtre au XVIIIesiècle: le dialogue des genres (review)

Book-length analyses of the interplay of novels and theatre during the eighteenth century are curiously rare given that so many writers of this period produced considerable works in both areas (even if their theatre has slipped into relative obscurity in the meantime). Catherine Ramond’s successful examination of the complex influences existing between these two literary modes is therefore a valuable contribution to eighteenth-century scholarship, although it should be noted that she is more concerned with the evolution of the eighteenth-century French novel than with the theatre. The book explores Ramond’s hypothesis of the ‘tentations théâtrales du roman’ (p. 2) during the eighteenth century: French novels more and more came to resemble plays, and vice versa, a process she labels ‘hybridation’. The three sections of the book progress chronologically. Initially, Ramond shows how early to mid-eighteenth-century novels borrowed set-piece ‘scenes’ and an increasing reliance on direct speech from the theatre. In the central section, she explores the mid-century innovation of the drame, which she links to the favourable French reception of Samuel Richardson’s novels. Ramond shows that readers often referred to Richardson’s works as drames, and this fact, along with the contemporaneous interest in aesthetic theories of the tableau and the pantomime, which were deployed in novels as well as plays, created ever closer links between novel and theatre. Ramond’s final section, examining the later eighteenth century, shows how theatrical features (narratorless dialogue, in particular) permeated genres as distant as the conte moral and libertine works. Occasionally, it feels as if the hypothesis of ‘hybridation’ is pushed somewhat too far and the inherent differences between print and performance are elided. For example, Ramond cites Beaumarchais’s designation of his theatrical trilogy as ‘le roman de la famille Almaviva’. But immediately before this statement Beaumarchais insisted no less on his trilogy being performed on stage; while Ramond notes this, she does not explore whether Beaumarchais was perhaps aiming for something beyond a mere ‘novelization’ of theatre. Furthermore, the minimal consideration given to the reception of literary works contained in Ramond’s study does not allow us to discover whether contemporaries concurred in Beaumarchais’s curious generic designation. Nevertheless, Ramond marshals convincing textual (and lexical) evidence for the value of a joint examination of eighteenth-century theatre and novels, and her analysis yields some interesting conclusions: she suggests a parallel, for example, between the process of adapting novels into plays and the generic upheaval involved in the attempt to carve out a place for the drame in the hierarchy of French theatrical forms. Ramond’s study also has an impressively broad sweep, examining both canonical and uncanonical authors from a very long French eighteenth century (from Madame de Lafayette to Pixérécourt), but the more obscure writers never occlude key figures such as Marivaux, Diderot, and Beaumarchais. Ramond’s book is a rare illustration of the extensive borrowings between theatre and novels in the eighteenth century and will be useful to researchers of both these literary modes.