The Structure of the Fantômas Novel Series by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain and the Problem of Seriality in Popular Literature

• Main Authors: Kirill A. Chekalov, Natalya T. Pakhsaryan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences 2017-12-01
• Series: Studia Litterarum
• Subjects: serial; novel serial; editorial project; narrative clichés; recurrent characters; paraliterature
• Online Access: http://studlit.ru/images/2017-2-4/Chekalov-Pakhsaryan.pdf

The essay examines the structure of a 32-volume series of Fantômas novels created by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain; it traces the origins and development of the serial genre and generic novelties related to seriality. The latter include a relative autonomy of each story in each volume and interconnection of the volumes via the figure of the criminal “slipping away” from the hands of justice. The study compares poetological techniques of the fabula development and points out specific features of the Belle époque reality as represented through the introduction of recognizable “cultural signs,” varia- tions of everyday incidents, and newspaper chronicle of criminal events. It also analyzes the image of Fantômas and other recurrent characters of the series (such as Juve, Fan- dor, Hélène, Lady Maud Beltham, etc). The authors examine para-literary features that can be traced in many other different forms such as TV series and graphic novels. They include (1) mythologization of the main character as embodiment of Evil, or a “criminal genius”; (2) confusion of the real and the fictional, verisimilar and extraordinary, horri- ble and comic based on the variations of literary and journalistic clichés; (3) repetition of plot patterns, (4) attempts to guess and to meet reader’s expectations.