27 Feuilleton

The name of this genre comes from the French word “feuille”, which translates as “leaf; sheet. Liszt, in turn, called the supplement to the newspaper, which was usually placed in the lower part of the strip and separated from the rest of the newspaper with a thick line. In domestic journalism, this part of the newspaper strip was called the basement. There were not only materials that resemble modern feuilletons in type, but also works that are now called reports, reviews, literature reviews, etc. The appearance of such basements in newspapers, researchers attributed to the XVIII century. Over time, the concept of "feuilleton" was applied only in relation to one type of text. In Soviet journalism, feuilleton occupied an extremely important place. But with the beginning of reforms in our country, this genre almost disappeared from the pages of newspapers and magazines.

The loss of the once leading positions on the pages of the press is not to a small extent explained by the insufficiently high level of qualifications of modern feuilletonists. Even those of them who adequately represent the current feuilleton can often find annoying blunders.

The future flaws of the feuilleton are usually “laid” before it is written - at the preparatory stage. What are the features of preparation for the creation of feuilleton? The main one is the search for the so-called “feuilleton fact”. This search is not always consciously. And it happens so often because the author is not always fully aware of the specifics of the feuilleton as a satirical genre and identifies his tasks with the tasks of, say, a critical article, replica, etc. If this happens, then it is not difficult for him to accept any “acute” fact (which could, for example, be used in the same replica) for a fact worthy of description in feuilleton. But for the feuilleton, only a special fact is suitable, namely, it contains, in a hypertrophied form, features typical of the phenomena of the class to which it belongs. Moreover, these should be traits worthy of ridicule (for example, one should not make fun of the tragic events). Of course, the feuilleton can be built not on one fact, but on their totality, which often happens. In this case, the typical appears as a definite pattern linking a number of individual facts. And the facts, in turn, act as pivot points of the satirical typification, i.e. creating a satirical image of a certain life phenomenon, which in this way is reduced to the level of a flawed one.

Other flaws of the feuilleton may arise as a result of the insufficient forethought of the logical connections, the phenomena discovered by the feuilletonist, the inability to establish cause-effect relationships between different facts, evaluate them and foresee their further development. This genre is very laborious, the work in it requires a special talent from the journalist and constant improvement of his skill [7]. Feuilleton, like other artistic and journalistic genres, is very “sensitive” to language errors and inaccuracies. If it is written in a clear, figurative language, then this greatly enhances its ability to be noticed by the reader.

See also

• Reportage
• 15 Review