L'art de la brièveté au XIXe siècle: les exemples d’Erckmann-Chatrian et de Maupassant

Abstract

This article focuses on the art of brevity, particularly the short story – tale and novella – and its rise in the nineteenth century, which corresponds to the development of the press. Newspaper editors hire best-selling authors, especially storytellers, who write stories for the front pages of daily newspapers. These writers are constrained by the brevity imposed by the format of the newspaper. We then study two examples of storytellers: Erckmann-Chatrian who enjoyed success under the Second Empire; and Maupassant who wrote under the Third Republic. Erckmann-Chatrian are the authors of fantastic tales with didactic purposes and Émile Erckmann alone composed Alsatian and Vosges fables. Maupassant, for his part, began by writing poems, then tales and short stories, and engaged in frequent rewriting: the tale published in the press is often considered a draft, which will lead to a short story collected in volume.