Pixerécourt, Radcliffe and Ducray-Duminil: the Gothic and melodrama during the Directory and Consulate

Abstract

This article looks at the role of novels in the development of melodrama across the Directory and Consulate period (1795-1804). Guilbert de Pixerécourt, who dominated the French theatrical scene of the early 19^th century with a blend of sentimental drama, music, and large-scale spectacle that came to be called melodrama, had his first theatrical successes with adaptations for the stage of novels by the most popular English Gothic writer in France, Ann Radcliffe, and the bestselling French author François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil, whose work bears a number of Radcliffian hallmarks.  These adaptations will reveal the significance of the Gothic in the development of melodrama and the political, aesthetic and dramatic priorities of this under-researched period.