2025 Theses Doctoral

Authoring the Nation: Revolutions in Literary Property and the Invention of France

Manansala, Katherine Marie

This dissertation explores the contributions of literary authors to discussions about intellectual property in France during the 19th century.

I begin from the premise that early legislation regulating literary property enshrined a vision of the French nation inherited from revolutionary discourse about property and equality before the law.

Next, I examine how two authors (Honoré de Balzac and Victor Hugo) reject or embrace this legacy in letters and speeches that they produced about literary property. I argue that these interventions can be read as the authors’ efforts to participate in nation-building. Balzac and Hugo arrive at different conclusions about the nature of literary property and subsequently endorse different visions of the French nation and the author’s place in it.

Finally, through close readings of two works of fiction (Notre-Dame de Paris and Illusions perdues), I demonstrate how many of the preoccupations about ownership, genius, collaboration that animate their conceptions of literary property also act as driving forces within their novels.