The Premiere of Victor Hugo’s Les Burgraves (7th of March 1843) and the Narrative Construction of Its Reception

Abstract

ABSTRACT The 7th of March 1843 has constituted a key event in French literature history for nearly a century and a half, but this event was largely fabricated: on the one hand, as early as 1843, it was reconstituted by the discourse of critics opposed to Hugo; on the other hand, in the following decades, this date was made into a major event by the story told in school textbooks. The media coverage of the play as well as the manipulation to which is was subjected actually first marked out the play as an event, thereby determining its ulterior reception: on the few occasions when the play was revived (in 1902 for the centenary of Hugo’s birth, and in 1977 when it was produced by Antoine Vitez), both the audience and the critics persistently referred to 1843 and to Les Burgraves’s alleged failure, as if it were always to be understood on the basis of its original reception. The narrative construction of 1843 as an event thus conditioned the play’s reception when it was revived on such occasions, and the premiere continued to be perceived as a failure, even though the play’s first production was in fact a success.