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through to them (the dramatic situation of the working classes, the depravity of some of those in power, the necessity for change of no matter what kind, and so on). Hence the influence, which seems proved, of Les Mystères on the popular uprising of 1848. As Bory remarks: "It cannot be denied that Sue is certainly in part responsible for the revolution of February 1848. February 1848 was like an irresistible saturnalia celebrated by Sue's heroes, the labouring classes and the dangerous classes in the Paris of Les Mystères."
18 For this reason we must keep in mind a principle, characteristic of any examination of mass communication media (of which the popular novel is one of the most spectacular examples): the message which has been evolved by an educated elite (in a cultural group or a kind of communications headquarters, which takes its lead from the political or economic group in power) is expressed at the outset in terms of a fixed code, but it is caught by divers groups of receivers and deciphered on the basis of other codes. The sense of the message often undergoes a kind of filtration or distortion in the process, which completely alters its 'pragmatic' function. This means that every semiotic study of such a work should be complemented by a field research. The semiotic analysis reveals the implications of the message at the moment of emission; the check on the spot should establish what new meanings have been attributed to the message at the moment of reception. |
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1. See Lucien Goldmann, Pour une sociologie du roman (Paris: Gallimard, 1964). |
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2. See two critical theories which stress the circular movement of this method: Leo Spitzer, Essays in Stylistics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948), pp. 1-39; and Erwin Panofsky, "The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline," in Meaning in the Visual Arts (New York: Doubleday, 1955). |
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3. I have in mind the meaning that Roland Barthes attributes to these two terms in "Rhetorique de l'image," Communications 4 (1964): 40-51. |
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4. For these and other biographical data, the reader is referred to Jean-Louis Bory's excellent work, Eugène SueLe roi du roman populaire (Paris: Hachette, 1962). See also Bory's "Presentation" in Eugene Sue, Les Mystères de Paris (Paris: Pauvert, 1963), and "Introduction," chronology, and notes to the anthology, Les plus belles pagesEugène Sue (Paris: Mercure de France, 1963). |
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5. Quoted in S. Parmenie and C. Bonnier de la Chapelle, Histoire d'un Editeur et de ses Auteurs: P. J. Hetzel (Paris: Albin Michel, 1963). See also Bory, Eugène Sue. . ., pp. 370ff. |
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6. See Bory, ibid., p. 248. |
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