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The Literary Market
| MATERIAL TEXTS | |
| Series Editors | |
| Roger Chartier | Leah Price |
| Joseph Farrell | Peter Stallybrass |
| Anthony Grafton | Michael F. Suarez, S.J. |
| A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. |
The Literary Market
Authorship and Modernity in the Old Regime
Geoffrey Turnovsky
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
Copyright © 2010 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Turnovsky, Geoffrey.
The literary market : authorship and the making of a modern cultural field in old regime
France / Geoffrey Turnovsky.
p. cm. — (Material texts)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4195-2 (alk. paper)
1. French literature—17th century—History and criticism. 2. French literature—18th century—History and criticism. 3. Authorship—Economic aspects—France—History. 4. Litertaure publishing—France—History—17th century. 5. Literature publishing—France—History—18th century. 6. Book industries and trade—France—History—17th century. 7. Book industries and trade—France—History—18th century. I. Title.
PQ245.T87 2009
840.9'004—dc22 2009018799
Contents
PART I: WRITING, PUBLISHING, AND LITERARY IDENTITY IN THE “PREHISTORY OF DROIT D’AUTEUR”
INTRODUCTION: THE STORY OF A TRANSITION: WHEN AND HOW DID WRITERS BECOME “MODERN”?
1. LITERARY COMMERCE IN THE AGE OF HONNÊTE PUBLICATION
2. THE PARADOXES OF ENLIGHTENMENT PUBLISHING
PART II: THE LITERARY MARKET: THE MAKING OF A MODERN CULTURAL FIELD
INTRODUCTION: RECONSIDERING THE ALTERNATIVE
3. “LIVING BY THE PEN”: MYTHOLOGIES OF MODERN AUTHORIAL AUTONOMY
4. ECONOMIC CLAIMS AND LEGAL BATTLES: WRITERS TURN TO THE MARKET
5. THE REALITY OF A NEW CULTURAL FIELD: THE CASE OF ROUSSEAU
Introduction
TWO BRIEF AND UNDERSTATED ANECDOTES can frame this study. They illustrate the ambiguities that will be at the core of my account of the “modernization” of intellectual identities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly to the degree that this book explores the historical process of the “birth of the modern author” in light of continuities with the values and behaviors of the early modern period rather than, as is more traditionally done, in terms of a sharp break with them.
The first is told by Paul Pellisson in the history of the Académie française, which he wrote in the late 1640s and early 1650s at a time when he was lobbying for a seat in the assembly. Remembering the strong interest in theater of the Académie’s first patron, Cardinal Richelieu, Pellisson recounts how the cardinal brought together five of the leading dramatists of the day in the mid-1630s—among whom the best known was Pierre Corneille—and commissioned them to write a series of plays based on subjects and arrangements of his own inspiration, including a 1635 Comédie des Tuileries, celebrating the palace next to the Louvre that Catherine de Médicis had built after the assassination of her husband Henri II in 1560; a now lost Grande pastorale from 1637; and a tragicomedy called L’aveugle de Smyrne, which was performed a month later.1 Each of the cinq auteurs was assigned to write one act of each play. For this, Pellisson observes, the writer received a pension from the minister, along with “considerable gestures of generosity [quelques libéralitez considérables], when they succeeded to his liking.”2 To explain what he means by “libéralitez,” Pellisson reveals what one of the playwrights, Guillaume Colletet, had confided to him:
Thus M. Colletet assured me that, having brought to him [Richelieu] the Monologue from Les Tuileries, the latter was especially drawn to the following two lines [sic] from the description of the Carré d’eau:
[At the same time, I saw on the banks of a stream]
The female duck dampened by the muddy water,
With a hoarse voice and a flap of her wings,
Reinvigorate the male duck which languished at her side,
[Au même temps j’ai vu sur le bord d’un ruisseau,
La cane s’humecter de la bourbe de l’eau,
D’une voix enrouée, et d’un battement d’aile,
Animer le canard qui languit auprès d’elle,]
And after listening to the rest, he gave him from his own hands fifty pistoles, with the obliging words that they were only for those two lines which he had found so beautiful, and that the King was not rich enough to pay for the rest.3
The second story dates from almost two hundred years later. When Victor Hugo published his play Cromwell in 1827, he removed from the famous preface a historical excursus originally intended as part of it. Having recently founded the Revue de Paris, Louis-Désiré Véron approached