Editorial

Welcome to the latest issue of the EPOP Project

List of Contents
1) Fantômas : Guinea pig of the
EPOP database
2) The Limoges EPOP team
3) Finding the plot…
4) Events and books on popular fiction
Newsletter. The EPOP Project (Popular Roots of European
Culture Through Film, Comics and Serialized Literature) is a
research and popularization project funded by the
European Commission in the frame of the Culture
Programme 2007 and is promoted by the Department of
Music and Performing Arts of the University of Bologna,
the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Limoges, the
Pallas Institute for Art Historical and Literature Studies -
University of Leiden, the GRIT (Groupe des Recherche sur
l’Image et le Texte) of the Catholic University of Louvain-
la-Neuve, and the Department for Culture of the Province
of Pescara. The project started on 24 November 2008 and
will be completed on 24 May 2010.

If you have any suggestions regarding the newsletter or

anything relating to the project, please send your message
to: federico.pagello@unibo.it

With best wishes,

EPOP Project Publication Committee

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1) Fantômas: Guinea pig of the EPOP
database

Over the last month, the teams involved in the EPOP project started to fill the database presented
in the previous issue of this newsletter. Information about one hundred written texts and their
translations, as well as fifty films, has been inserted so far. As an example of the geographical
analysis which the database enables, we present here two maps referring to the circulation of the
first five Fantômas books through their translations and reissues between 1911 and the mid-1930s.
The first map clearly shows the speed at which a popular culture bestseller circulated among
European countries, hinting at their cultural proximity. Long before the birth of any European
political institutions in the postwar period, media culture created a shared background, of which
Fantômas gives only a first glimpse. The second map shows how the circulation process does not
stop inside Europe. These data suggest that further research might need to focus on those
countries that function as bridgeheads to other continents, i.e. the United Kingdom as Fantômas’
link toward the US, where the character became famous through its British translations.

Fantômas : translation and circulation of the first five books in

Europe (1911-1934)

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Fantômas : translation and circulation of the first five books
in the world (1911-1934)

2) The Limoges EPOP Team

CRLPCM: Research Centre on Popular Literatures and Media Cultures
University of Limoges

Overview

The CRLPCM (Centre de Recherches sur les Littératures Populaires et les Cultures Médiatiques:
Research Centre on Popular Literatures and Media Cultures) at the University of Limoges was
founded in 1982 by Jean Claude Vareille and Ellen Constans. It is the only research group in
France exclusively devoted to the analysis of popular fiction in modern media. From 1982 to 1995,
the Centre worked on thematic and genre analysis, focusing especially on the nineteenth-century

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and Belle Epoque popular novel, contributing to a reassessment of the anthropological and literary
relevance of the ‘mauvais genres’, reviled by high culture and ignored by intellectuals. The results
of this pioneering research were published in three collective
reference books, collecting the proceedings of three international conferences: Littérature populaire.
Peuple, nation, région, Limoges, Trames, 1988 ; Le roman sentimental, Limoges, Trames, 1990 ; Crime et
Châtiment dans le roman populaire de langue française du XIXe siècle, Limoges, PULIM, coll. Littératures
en marge, 1994.
Since 1995, thanks to Jacques Migozzi, who now leads the team, le CRLPCM has widened
the scope of its research. It promotes the interdisciplinary dynamics of an international group of
researchers, through conferences, work meetings, and collective publications, such as the recent Le
roman populaire en France (1836-1960). Du roman-feuilleton aux premières tv adaptations, published by
Editions Autrement). Along with their network of partners (currently the Catholic University of
Louvain, the University of Versailles Saint Quentin in Yvelines, the University of Bologna, the
University of Leeds, the University of Leiden, the UQUAM in Québec, the PUC of Sao Paulo),
the Limoges researchers provide a critical view of multimedial fiction content produced and
distributed by cultural industries and circulating in the public space since the rise of the roman-
feuilleton. During the last five years, the CRLPCM has collaborated with the teams of CRELIQ
(University Laval, Québec), of the UMR L.I.RE (Lyon 2, Grenoble 3), of the University of
Mannheim and the University of Cergy-Pontoise.
Important conferences have come out of this constantly evolving collective work. The conference
proceedings were published by Presses Universitaire de Limoges in their specialized series
‘Littérature en marge’ and ‘Médiatextes’: Zila Bernd and Jacques Migozzi (ed.), Frontières du littéraire.
Littératures orale et populaire. Brésil / France, Limoges, PULIM, Littératures en marge, 1995; Jacques
Migozzi (ed.), Le roman populaire en questions, Limoges, PULIM, Littératures en marge, 1997; Jacques
Migozzi (ed.), De l’écrit à l’écran, Limoges, PULIM, Littératures en marge, 2000; Myriam
Boucharenc and Joëlle Deluche (ed.), Littérature et reportage, Limoges, PULIM, Médiatextes, 2001;
Philippe Le Guern and Jacques Migozzi (ed.), Productions du populaire, PULIM, Médiatextes, 2005.
More recently, the CRLPCM team has extended its activities to the World Wide Web as well,
collaborating with peer-reviewed electronic journals, above all Belphégor

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(http://www.dal.ca/~etc/belphegor), directed by the International Coordination of Research on
Popular Literatures and Media Cultures. A work meeting held in Limoges in May 2003 (‘Genres
and mass culture’) led to the contents of Belphegor vol. 3 no. 2, December 2003, and a forthcoming
thematic issue will collect contributions from the 2006-2007 Limoges international conference
series (‘Idéologie et stratégies argumentatives dans les récits imprimés de grande consommation.
XIXe-XXIe siècles’). A second part of these contributions will be published online in June 2009
by the electronic review A contrario, as a ‘dossier’ entitled ‘Journalistic Narrative and Media
Culture’.
Besides these collective works and the monographic studies of its individual members, the
CRLPCM edits the Médiatextes series with a strong interdisciplinary approach (co-editors: Jacques
Migozzi and Myriam Boucharenc, Paris X). This series concentrates on the publication of original
research focusing on the production of mass culture texts (media, institutional and formal
strategies, classification/declassification, canonical dichotomies), from the oldest forms of media
culture connected with the mass press to the most recent ones, largely dominated by images. Ten
titles have been published since 2001: Littérature et reportage (2001) ; Daniel Couégnas, Fictions,
énigmes, images. Lectures (para ?) littéraires (2001) ; Vittorio Frigerio, Les Fils de Monte-Cristo. Idéologie du
héros de roman populaire (2002) ; La légitimité culturelle en question(s), ed. Sylvette Giet (2004) ; Productions
du populaire (2005) ; Jacques Migozzi, Boulevards du populaire (2005) ; Jean-Pierre Bacot, La presse
illustrée au XIXe siècle. Une histoire oubliée (2005) ; Marc Guillaumie, le Roman préhistorique. Essai d’un
définition d’un genre, essai d’histoire d’un mythe (2006) ; Ellen Constans, Ouvrières des lettres (2007) ; Loïc
Artiaga, Des Torrents de papier. Catholicisme et lectures populaires au XIXe siècle (2007). An essay written
by Matthieu Letourneux devoted to the adventure novel will be published in 2009 (for further
information please visit the website of the Presses Universitaires de Limoges:
http://www.pulim.unilim.fr).
In addition to their current scientific activities, CRLPCM researchers often participate in
professional sessions or round-tables addressed to librarians or cultural mediators.
From an institutional point of view, the CRLPCM is one of the sub-teams of EA 1087
‘Human Spaces and Cultural Interactions’, within which it carries out a research project entitled
‘Literary Value and Media Culture’.

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Short presentation of the team members

The two founders of the Centre, now deceased, had a decisive influence on its development. Their
major works include:
Jean-Claude Vareille, Filatures : itinéraires à travers les cycles de Lupin et de Rouletabille, Grenoble, PUG,
1980.
Jean-Claude Vareille, L’Homme masqué, le Justicier, le Détective. Essais sur le roman populaire et le roman
policier, d’Eugène Sue à Simenon, Lyon, PUL, 1989.
Jean-Claude Vareille, Le Roman populaire français (1789-1914). Idéologies et pratiques.,
Limoges/Montréal, PULIM/ Nuit Blanche éditeur, coll. Littératures en marge, 1994.
Ellen Constans, Parlez-moi d’amour. Le roman sentimental des romans grecs aux collections de l’an 2000,
Limoges, PULIM, 1999.
Ellen Constans, Ouvrières des lettres, Limoges, PULIM, Médiatextes, 2007.

Currently the permanent nucleus of the CRLPCM is formed by Jacques Migozzi, Loïc Artiaga,
Natacha Levet et Marc Guillaumie. A professor of French literature specialising in contemporary
fiction will reinforce the team from 1 September 2009.

Jacques Migozzi is Professor of modern and contemporary French literature. Starting with a
specialist study of Jules Valles (to whom he devoted his dissertation) and of the socially committed
novel of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he has both widened and redirected his research
since 1992, recognising the anthropological significance of mass culture fiction and questioning
the symbolic hierarchies of culture. This critical re-examination of his position as cultural mediator
within the university as an institution led him towards a research programme entitled ‘Popular
writing, popular literatures: Nineteenth-century and Belle Epoque literature between social
commitment and entertainment’, then to publish a synthesis of that research in the essay Boulevards
du populaire. His individual work focuses in particular on the socially committed or edifying popular
literature (Erckmann-Chatrian, Eugène Le Roy, Le Tour de la France par deux enfants…) and attempts
to build theoretical frameworks, and to place his research subject into a wider critical perspective,
aiming to capitalize on the results of twenty years of research on the popular and to prepare the
ground for further collective work.

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Recent selected bibliography :
– ‘Littérature(s) populaire(s) : un objet protéiforme.’, in Hermès no. 42, 2005.
– ‘Sociocritique, rhétorique, pragmatique : le cas Vallès’, Littérature no. 140 ‘Analyse du discours et
sociocritique’, December 2005.
– ‘Récit populaire et prêt à penser / prêt à rêver : balises et perspectives’, in Belphégor, may
2006, ‘Idéologie et stratégies argumentatives dans les récits imprimés de grande consommation.
XIXe-XXIe siècles’ (http://www.dal.ca/~etc/belphegor)
– ‘Lignées et racines : De Claude Michelet et de l’Ecole de Brive’, in Michel Beniamino et Claude
Filteau (ed.), Mémoire et culture, PULIM, 2006.
– ‘La révolution française du roman-feuilleton (1836-1848)’, in M.-F. Cachin, D. Cooper-Richet,
J.-Y. Mollier, C. Parfait (eds.)., Au Bonheur du feuilleton. Naissance et mutations d’un genre (France, Etats-
Unis, Grande-Bretagne, XVIIIe - XXe siècles), Paris : Créaphis, 2007.
– ‘Mauvais genres et bons livres : ce n’est qu’un début, continuons le débat’, in Loïc Artiaga (ed.),
Le roman populaire en France (1836-1960). Du roman-feuilleton aux premières adaptations télévisuelles, Paris,
Editions Autrement, 2008.
– ‘Cet obscur objet du désir universitaire : coup d’œil dans le rétroviseur sur 15 ans de recherches
sur les fictions populaires.’ (ENS Conference june 2008 ‘Fictions populaires’), in Revue d’Histoire
littéraire de la France, forthcoming.

Loïc Artiaga is ‘maître de conférence’ of History. His first works were focused on the attempts by
Catholics to control media culture between 1830 and 1860. This subject was analysed through an
interdisciplinary approach: religious and cultural history, book and readership history, the history
of literature and of censorship. Discussing the aesthetic value related to these works, he works on
their social meaning and their critical reception in a cultural history perspective.

Selected Bibliograhy :
Loïc Artiaga (ed.), Le Roman populaire (1830-1960). Des premiers feuilletons aux adaptations télévisuelles,
Paris, Autrement, 2008.
Loïc Artiaga, Des Torrents de papier. Catholicisme et lectures populaires au XIXe siècle, Limoges, Pulim,
2007.

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Loïc Artiaga, ‘James Bond : modes d’emploi (1965- années 1990)’, in Françoise Hache-Bissette,
Fabien Boully, Vincent Chenille (eds.), James Bond (2)007. Anatomie d’un mythe populaire, Belin, 2007.

Natacha Levet is ‘maître de conférence’ of French literature. Her research work focuses on the
notion of the genre in media culture, in particular in the French noir novel, to which she devoted
her dissertation. She also worked on authors of noir novels Jean-Patrick Manchette and Thierry
Jonquet. In 2007, she participated in the conference in Cerisy-la-Salle on ‘The detective novel
today’. Furthermore she collaborates in a research programme on the cultural practices of 8-18
year old children. She teaches at the Limoges University Institute for Teachers Training where she
conducts seminars on media culture (detective novel and film, fantasy and science-fiction)
addressed to high school teachers.

Recent publications:

Levet N., ‘Les ‘Chéries noires’ : écriture féminine et roman noir’, Revue Belphégor (Vol. VII, no. 2,
2008), http://www.dal.ca/~etc/belphegor

Levet N., ‘Jean-Patrick Manchette entre paralittérature et littérature, les paradoxes d’un auteur’,
Temps Noir, no. 11 / May 2008, Nantes, Editions Joseph K, p. 156-164.

Levet N., ‘French Noir fiction, a blurred identity’, Questions of identity in detective fiction, dir. Linda
Martz, Anita Higgie, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, 2007, p. 129-138.

Levet N., contributions to the second édition of the Dictionnaire des Littératures Policières, directed by
Claude Mesplède, Editions Joseph K., 2007.

Levet N., ‘Thierry Jonquet, la puissance de la fiction’, Temps Noir, 9 / March 2005, Nantes,
Editions Joseph K, p. 4-33.

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Marc Guillaumie lives and teaches in Limoges. He studies the prehistoric fictions imagined by
writers and artists. In Le Roman préhistorique : essai de définition d’un genre, essai d’histoire d’un mythe
(PULIM, 2006) he attempts to demonstrate that these fictions belong to a tradition which first
appeared in the nineteenth century, fixing themes, motifs and the principal characters of a
coherent group of representations for a long time, using the authority of science, but above all
disseminating the preconceptions of their historical period. Therefore the fictions reflect an
ideology marked by racism and the apology of progress; today they show for example an apparent
feminist or ecological commitment, but with the same goal of building the modern myth of our
origin. From novel to engraving, film and comics, the same figures and processes are repeated
with only few variations.

3) Finding the Plot…

Call for papers: ‘Finding the Plot: On the Importance of Storytelling in Popular Fictions’ (14-16
April 2010). A conference co-organised by the Popular Cultures Research Network (University of
Leeds) and the Centre de Recherches sur les Littératures Populaires et les Cultures Médiatiques (University of
Limoges).
Story-telling is a basic human function. By telling stories we make sense of our own lives,
of our society and of history. We live in time, our lives circumscribed by an inevitable end or
dénouement, yet also woven into the lives of others, or into innumerable sub- or parallel plots. Yet
plotting — the skilful structuring of event into story — has generally been considered, in Peter
Brooks’ words: ‘the element of narrative that least sets off and designs high art’. Meanwhile,
popular fictions are acknowledged to owe their success to the craft of story-telling, of compelling
the reader to turn the pages. This compulsion was defined by Barthes as ‘le plaisir’ (instant
gratification), in contrast to ‘la jouissance’ (intellectual fulfilment) that awaited those prepared to
engage with the properly literary text. However, in recognition of the enduring appeal of the
popular forms of the novel, researchers have recently begun to challenge the barthesian view by
presenting the story rather than the text as the key locus of the reading experience. This
repositioning of the story has allowed not only for the re-evaluation of the relationship between
‘high’ and low’ forms of fiction, but also for the exploration of the interface between production

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and reception and of the numerous extensions and diversifications of the literary into the
cinematic and other fields.
Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, with contributions welcomed from scholars
working (for example) in the fields of literature, sociology of culture, cultural studies, text/image,
psychology, philosophy, this conference will explore the relationship between storytelling, reading
and pleasure, within popular French/francophone and English/anglophone literature and
associated cultural forms. The definition of ‘popular’ remains open and debatable: some highly
‘literary’ texts have also achieved massive popularity with readers.
Both theoretical papers and ‘case-studies’ are welcome.

Questions to be asked will include:

- How does the re-evaluation of story affect our understanding of literary history since the
nineteenth century?
- How have the pleasures of fiction been theorised and evaluated in anglophone and francophone
cultures?
- How have hegemonic notions of cultural legitimacy shaped the experience of reading and the
reception of texts?
- What is the significance of storytelling now, and what new forms does it take?
- What is the nature of literary pleasure, and is this significantly different between ‘high’ and ‘low’
cultural forms?
- To what extent, and in what ways, does the transnational and multi-media nature of
contemporary texts alter the nature of reading pleasure?
- What is the relationship between the cognitive and the affective in the experience of reading
fiction?
- Are the pleasures of consuming fiction necessarily gendered, and how?
- Beyond the limitations of a critical discourse that accords literary value only to the high brow,
can we distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fictions?
The conference will be held at the University of Leeds, UK, 14-16 April 2010, and will
include the AGM of the international research network Coordination Internationale des Chercheurs en
Littératures Populaires et Culture Médiatique. Languages of communication: English and French.
Keynote speakers will include the novelist and essayist NANCY HUSTON.

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 Proposals (MAXIMUM 300 WORDS/ 1500 CHARACTERS – in English or French) are
invited for papers or panels on the themes outlined above, deadline 15 September 2009
(d.holmes@leeds.ac.uk, jacques.migozzi@unilim.fr).
The focus of the conference will be on francophone and anglophone literatures and related
forms (e.g. film and other adaptations) from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, and on the
theoretical questions defined above.
Convenors: Diana Holmes, David Platten (LEEDS PCRN), Jacques Migozzi, Loïc Artiaga
(Limoges CRLPCM)

4) Events and books on Popular Fiction

24 June 2009, ‘Policy and the Popular’ (Leeds)
The workshop will compare ways in which we think and theorise the relationship, explicit or
implicit, between policy and the popular in a variety of senses and settings. The settings
will certainly include government policies for the arts but not exclusively so. Some will be
geographic (the UK, France); others will involve specific modes of cultural action: live music, the
politics of canonisation in the Catholic Church, and the ‘lay probing of policy’. Papers will be
broadly linked by a concern with the conceptualisation, theorisation or discursive representation of
the relationship between policy and the popular, using a variety of disciplinary perspectives and
methods.
Convenors: David Looseley (d.looseley@leeds.ac.uk) for PCRN and the Centre
for Cultural Policy Studies (CCPS), University of Warwick.

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/smlc/pcrn_policyandpop.htm

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25 June 2009, ‘Poor text/ rich context? Approaches to popular film
and television’ (Leeds)

This workshop will compare and contrast ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ methodologies for the study of popular
television and film, including the study of audiences as well as texts. The workshop will begin with
a keynote address by John Corner (Visiting Professor at Leeds) setting out the condition and
possibilities of popular screen studies. This will be followed by sessions devoted to television and
cinema, in which short position papers will lead to discussion. Other speakers include: Robert
Gordon (Cambridge), Helen Wood (De Monfort), Stephen Coleman (Institute of
Communications Studies, Leeds), Stephanie Dennison and Antonio da Silva (Modern Languages,
Leeds).

Organised by Alan O’Leary, Leeds: a.o'leary@leeds.ac.uk.

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/smlc/pcrn_poortextrichcontext.htm

27 June - 4 July 2009, ‘Cinema Ritrovato’ (Bologna)

Il Cinema Ritrovato, the festival sponsored by the Mostra Internazionale del Cinema Libero and
the Cineteca del Comune di Bologna, invites film lovers from around the world to Bologna from
Saturday 27 June through Saturday 4 July 2009. Eight days and evenings of cinephilic pleasure to
be experienced in various locations: the twin screens of the Cineteca’s Lumière cinemas, one
dedicated just to silent cinema, the other to sound; the Bologna Opera House and the Arlecchino
Cinema (where we can experience the miracle of big screen projection as films were meant to be
seen, but almost never are these days). The festival also sponsors the Film Publishing Fair (Books,
DVDs, Antiquarian and Vintage Materials) and Il Cinema Ritrovato DVD Award (6th edition). Il
Cinema Ritrovato will host two seminars: the continuation of the Film Restoration Summer
School / FIAF Summer School 2009, organized by the Cineteca di Bologna, and a workshop for
European cinema exhibitors organized by Europa Cinemas and Progetto Schermi e Lavagne.
Enrollment in each seminar requires separate registration, available on the website.

http://www.cinetecadibologna.it/cinemaritrovato2009/ev/Programma

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20 - 30 July 2009, ‘Comment rêver la science-fiction à présent ?’
(Cerisy)
La science-fiction serait-elle moribonde? Elle est moins populaire que la Fantasy. Mais surtout, elle
peine à se renouveler, tant du point de vue du contenu que de la forme (rien de bien nouveau
depuis le Cyberpunk ou le Steampunk, oubliées les expérimentations d’un Ballard ou d’un Dick).
L’avenir du genre sera-t-il assuré?
Ce colloque tente de dresser un constat de l’état de la SF contemporaine en abordant, sans
exclusive, tout en favorisant une approche pluridisciplinaire, les interrogations suivantes. La SF
peut-elle prolonger son existence en rejouant de vieux mythes dans des contextes futuristes? Peut-
elle trouver des sources de régénération dans de nouveaux supports et/ou dans des civilisations ou
aires géographiques autres que celles qui ont produit les chefs-d’oeuvre de son âge d’or? Comment
le processus d’hybridation avec d’autres genres l’a-t-elle transformée? D’où proviennent les
nouveaux modèles? L’hybridation est-elle le signe d’un renouveau ou au contraire le symptôme
d’une crise profonde?
Url de référence :
http://www.ccic-cerisy.asso.fr/sciencefiction09.html

Eugène Sue, Les Mystères de Paris,

A new edition of Les Mystères de Paris was recently released in the Quarto series (Gallimard), edited
by Judith Lyon-Caen.

Claudio Gallo e Fabrizio Foni (eds.), Ottocento nero italiano,

Aragno, Torino 2009
Ottocento nero italiano is an anthology of nineteenth-century Italian fantastic literature. Along with
more famous authors (Emilio De Marchi, Salvatore Di Giacomo, Carolina Invernizio, Emilio
Salgari and Matilde Serao), Gallo and Foni have collected stories by less known writers such as
Giuseppe Bevione, Franco Mistrali, Armando Silvestri, Giuseppe Zucca and others. Gallo and
Foni reveal the richness of an often disregarded if not forgotten genre in Italian fiction.

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