Łukasz Szkopiński
Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 34, 2023, pp. 137 - 154
https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.23.015.17932Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon (1786-1864) was the author of numerous novels belonging to different genres. However, if he wasn’t completely forgotten by the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th c., it was thanks to a long list of apocryphal memoirs attributed to famous people which in fact he wrote himself. At first, this paper shows reactions from the press in 1829 after the publication of Mémoires d’une femme de qualité sur Louis XVIII and Mémoires de la comtesse Du Barri. Although some journalists chose to perpetuate the fiction that the memoirs were authentic, others denounced them as false and heavily criticized this kind of literary enterprise. Thereafter, the article focuses on Lamothe-Langon’s response to his critics and on his vision of apocryphal memoirs in his preface to Les Après-diners de S. A. S. Cambacérès (1837).
Łukasz Szkopiński
Romanica Cracoviensia, Volume 18, Issue 4, Volume 18 (2018), pp. 217 - 226
https://doi.org/10.4467/20843917RC.18.023.9595The aim of the present paper is to examine the relations between the novels, published by François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil (1761–1819), and their melodramatic adaptations, w ith a particular emphasis being set on the works of René-Charles Guilbert de Pixerécourt (1773–1844). After comparing fragments of the novels with certain extracts of the melodramas, the article focuses on the similarities between the two sets of texts as well as on Ducray-Duminil’s attitude towards the fact that countless playwrights used to draw on his works in order to create their melodramas. The paper concludes with a short analysis of reasons why Ducray-Duminil’s novels were so popular amongst the dramatic writers of his times.