Les Habits Noirs

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Les Habits noirs (Eng. The Black Coats) is a series of novels by the author Paul Féval (1816–1887), which is about an underground organization of the same name in 19th century Paris and consists of the following individual novels: Les Habits noirs (1863), Coeur d ' acier (1866), La Rue de Jérusalem (1868), L'arme invisible (1869), Maman Léo , L'avaleur de sabre , Les compagnons du trésor and La Bande Cadet (1875).

History of origin and temporal background

In 1863 Paul Féval began the cycle of novels Les Habits noirs , which was to grow to eight novels in 14 volumes. The texts were published in advance under the pseudonym Jean Diable, John Devil or Hans Teufel in the features section of the newspaper Le Constitutionnel and the weekly newspaper Jean Diable , which Féval founded immediately after the publication of his novel Le Bossu .

During the July monarchy from 1830 to 1848, Féval was one of the most important authors of popular feature novels, along with Alexandre Dumas and Eugène Sue . Féval was aware of the effect of the weekly publication of his works and tried all his life to build a bridge between entertainment and literary standards and represented this concern in magazine articles.

In 1848 the wave of success of the feature pages novel came to a standstill for the first time with the end of the July monarchy. Féval therefore turned temporarily to the theater and only returned to the feature novel at the end of the Second Republic . With the publication of Le Bossu in 1857, he succeeded in placing himself again among the most popular novelists of the era. Until the end of the Second Empire in 1870, the Parisian magazine publishers fought over the first publication of Féval's works.

He resumed his endeavors to raise his feature novels to a literary level from 1860: In doing so, he faced the challenge of creating a work that would meet with the approval of the general public as well as the elite circles. He used the chairmanship as president of the Société des Gens de Lettres , which he held from 1865 to 1876 with an intermittent interruption, to fight against the growing disdain for the feature section novel. In order to distance himself from this, he wanted to make the simple structure of the typical feature novels more complex in Les Habits noirs and staged the main story, for example, at times in the form of a mise en abyme .

The novel cycle stands in the context of time: In the 19th century, the old monarchist order is no longer tenable. The epoch is characterized by instability, social advancement due to incomprehensible reasons and the loss of power of the nobility. This dissolution of the old structures is omnipresent in Les Habits noirs : innocent people are convicted, families are separated, descendants of famous families lose their former reputation, while former cabaret dancers gain social prestige by arbitrarily assigned the title of countess. Féval takes his characters from all social classes.

The theming of secret machinations and parallel societies went hand in hand with the imperial government from 1852, which restricted freedom of expression with its control apparatus. In Les Habits Noirs, Féval stigmatizes the decline of the social structure after the French Revolution : the criticism of the criminal, secret machinations during the Restoration , July Monarchy and the first years of the Second Empire runs like a red thread through the novel cycle.

Another leitmotif in Les Habits noirs, as in all of Féval's other works, is inheritance sneaking and generally unjustified property ownership. As a monarchist, he viewed the social upheavals since the French Revolution and the emergence of the upper bourgeoisie critically. In many passages of the habits noirs , the decline of the aristocracy with its old, idealized values ​​is revived and the machinations of crooks who sneak up on the fortunes of the unsuspecting aristocracy are exposed.

This theme puts a new type of hero at the center of the novels of the last quarter of the 19th century: an almost meaningless, anonymous figure, an innocent victim who is at the mercy of an intrigue, has to wash himself away from an illegally attributed guilt in the course of the novel . The main characters who determine the beginning of each novel, such as the chaser Maynotte, the judge Rémy d'Arx or Roland de Clare, do not seem predestined for their leading role at first. They do not have extraordinary abilities, only the use of courage, pragmatism and their intelligence can help them to overcome the obstacles.

After Féval had completed the seventh part of the saga, La Bande Cadet , he lost all of his fortune. This led him to convert to ultramontanism , a strict alignment of the Catholic faith , in 1876 . A year earlier he finished Les Habits noirs . Overall, however, the cycle appears incomplete.

Despite addressing criminals, Féval turns out to be not a social reformer, but a neutral observer who writes down the conditions of the time without judgment. With his theme of the pursuit of wealth and the decline of morality, he accurately reflects the social reality of the years 1830–1870.

As far as the public is concerned, Féval's readership mainly reached the newly created reading classes of the “ petite bourgeoisie ”. His novels are therefore often assigned to the genre of the “popular bourgeois”.

On the role of character names

In Les Habits noirs , Paul Féval cleverly plays with the identities of his characters. He creates characters that have multiple names, surnames and nicknames. This creates confusion for the reader on the one hand, but also tension on the other. Féval believed that a surname or nickname gave a character more meaning and fame. So names had a very special meaning for Paul Féval in Les Habits noirs . In addition, there are speaking names and stereotypes; Féval, for example, refers to all Alsatians in his work as Schwartz and thus ironically refers to their origins.

Narrative technique: irony and mise en abyme

In addition to the irony , the novel cycle is sometimes characterized by the technique of mise en abyme, which is unusual for the popular novel . This is a story in another story or a drama within the novel. This corresponds to the numerous self-reflective moments in which the narrator addresses his narrative style.

reception

Les Habits noirs was filmed in France in the 1960s as a television series (feuilleton télévisé) and broadcast from October 16 to November 24, 1967 on the first channel of the public broadcaster ORTF . The series consisted of 31 episodes of 15 minutes each. The script was written by Jacques Siclier and directed by René Lucot.

A short history of the habits noirs is told in the French comic series Fantask (Episode 3, “L'ombre du passé”, 2001) and in its American version Strangers: Homicron .

Unlike most of Féval's other novels, the Habits noirs have not yet been translated into German.

literature

  • Droin-Yokel, Richard: Les signifiants du désir dans les Habits Noirs de Paul Féval. In: Littérature 23, 1976 ( Paroles du désir ), pp. 31-48.
  • Gaboriau, Emile: Monsieur Lecoq. Paris [1869]
  • Galvan, Jean-Pierre: Paul Féval. Parcours d'un œuvre. Société d'Edition Les Belles Lettres, Paris 2000.
  • Martin, Denise: Noms, surnoms et sobriquets in "Les Habits noirs". In: Paul Féval, novelist populaire. Colloque de Rennes 1987. Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Rennes 1992, pp. 141-150

Web links