The popular novel, also called paraliterature, is the body of widely read French fiction that emerged in the nineteenth century as falling printing costs, new press organizations, and rising literacy met a newly urban, industrial readership. It traces its roots to oral storytelling and to the Bibliotheque bleue, small illustrated booklets peddled through rural France from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, and reached an early popular formula in Francois-Guillaume Ducray-Duminil's novels around 1800. Eugene Sue's The Mysteries of Paris (1842 to 1843) made the form a public sensation, and its golden age ran from 1880 to 1900 with authors such as Xavier de Montepin, Jules Mary, and Emile Richebourg writing around themes of victimhood, judicial error, and social injustice, before radio and film began to displace it after 1920; Alexandre Dumas, Paul Feval, and Georges Simenon are among its practitioners who kept lasting recognition.
Facts
Notable ExampleThe Mysteries of Paris (Eugene Sue) 1 Defining TraitSimple chronological story with well-identified characters and archetypes, plot over style 1 Sources
1. Popular novel in France - Wikipedia
Origins and myth
With The Mysteries of Paris, Sue created archetypes that would be extensively reused
Lead section, second paragraph
present a story in a simple chronological order, with well-identified characters, archetypes, and where the plot takes precedence over stylistic considerations
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