French Literature Reviews - 2026

Évelyne Pieiller, Mousquetaires et misérables. Écrire aussi grand que le peuple à venir : Dumas, Hugo, Baudelaire et quelques autres
Novel and Narrative Prose

“When I was a child, we didn't go to the movies. My mother opened the café at 5:00 a.m. for the garbage collectors. Yet she took me to the Eldorado twice. Luxurious moments, when we walked through the falling night in the glow of the streetlights. The first time was for Les Misérables.

A year later, during the unexpected respite of a perilous convalescence, I read The Vicomte de Bragelonne. I read it with a somewhat distant interest. I must admit I missed everything that came before. But it still felt like Christmas.

My mother was not the sole representative of the working class. But after all, she had been a maid-of-all-work, a factory worker, a cashier; she was proud of her elementary school certificate and mysteriously remembered a few major dates in labor history. She had no sympathy for those who looked down on fallen women, the wretched, the down-on-their-luck. She never read Les Misérables, nor The Three Musketeers. But she knew the story. And she wasn't surprised to be familiar with it in her own way. She wasn't intimidated by it. It was part of her heritage. Just like for millions of people all over the world.

This kind of literature does not seek to lower itself to the reader's level, but strives to write on a scale as vast as the people of the future. There are songs, criminal slang, romantic serials, the burlesque and the tragic, philosophy, flamboyant lyricism, allusions, panache, and politics everywhere... And the people of the future have made it their own, in their own way.”

A strange duo, the Musketeers and Les Misérables. One tells us that power is vile and existence cramped, but that something still remains to stand beautifully against the established order, boredom, injustice, and a pinched life, if we stick together. The other tells us that the established order massacres, but that we can open up the future, standing on the barricades, real or mental. In these books, ordinary people read of their sorrows and their strengths, and find fortification in them.

The unruly common folk who would be massacred throughout this unruly 19th century, and who would persist in their lack of taste, would turn Les Misérables into their legend; and this mass that massively doesn't give a damn about Art—especially with a capital A—would furthermore make the Musketeers their ideal of sparkling camaraderie. Ordinary people saw themselves loved, embellished, and armed within these pages: they chose their own novelistic Internationales. A fabulous encounter between the imaginations of the exiles of the Revolution and the orphans of its promise to complete humanity. You understand nothing of the 19th century unless you realize that it was born of the Revolution, that it dreams of it incessantly, even in its nightmare incarnations. This sudden emergence reshaped the mental landscape; the ground and sky tremble, the individual is fractured. For the Revolution invented the people.

How is it that 19th-century French literature supplied the world with some of its most universal heroes? Why did this production of popular imagination spark here and there—and why did it stop, never to resume again?... Here we see how a novelist's writing transcends him when he listens to the pulse of his era's popular uprisings.

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Read an excerpt on the website of Le Monde diplomatique…

Philippe Lançon devoted a review to this book in Charlie Hebdo…

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Also read on en-attendant-nadeau.fr:

"The Encounter Between the People and Literature", by Élie Marek (online June 18, 2022)

Writing as grand as the people of the future was, according to Évelyne Pieiller—novelist, journalist for Le Monde diplomatique, and talented narrator—the purpose of two books looked down upon by high literature, even though they are among the only true popular novels, "that is to say, precisely recognized by the people as their own." These two works are The Three Musketeers and Les Misérables: Dumas's ideal of "sparkling camaraderie" and Hugo's gigantic "peopled murmur."

The 19th century in France was deeply marked by the legacy of the Revolution, a period of political upheaval that fundamentally altered the social and mental landscape. This era saw the emergence of a new conception of the people as a central historical force, influencing both the political climate and the literary imagination. Works such as The Three Musketeers and Les Misérables reflect this period, as literature began to engage with the aspirations and struggles of the masses. Readers interested in the intersection of popular culture and 19th-century French literature may find this study relevant.

Évelyne Pieiller discusses how Dumas and Hugo created narratives that resonated with ordinary readers. The text examines themes of camaraderie, injustice, and the spirit of rebellion, noting how such literature provided a sense of identity to the common people. It addresses the capacity of these authors to capture the pulse of popular uprisings and the collective imagination of their time. These novels are described as having become a form of cultural heritage that remains accessible to a global audience.