Nineteenth-Century French Studies

Abstract:

Sarah Bernhardt's first American tour (1880–81) is one of the most publicized cultural events in France and the United States. The controversial actress's performances are commented at length by the Parisian press and the American newspapers, as well as the account of the actress Marie Colombier, fragments of which appear in the press. In my study of this vast corpus of publications from a discourse analysis perspective, I focus on the transatlantic media discourse: a specific discourse based on socio-cultural stereotypes, highlighting new relationships and commonalities in the French and American media systems. While emphasizing the impact of the concepts of distance and circulation on transatlantic media discourse and its enunciators, this article will also point out the similarities between this particular discourse and that of the French colonial press at the end of the nineteenth century. (In French)