After the fall: The chute of a play, droits d'auteur, and literary property in the Old Regime (France)

This article addresses the advent of literary property in the Parisian comm ercial theater between 1680 and 1780, a process that occurred at the inters ection of developments in royal regulation, court culture, commercial deman ds, and the status of writers. It brings together these issues in a study o f a practice known as 'the fall [la chute]', by which the royal theater det ermined ownership of plays on its repertory. It explains first how the fall , in theory, reconciled the theater's multiple mandates--serving the king a nd the Parisian public, sustaining itself economically form commercial reve nues, and providing a venue for France's leading men of letters--to develop a distinctly French literary tradition. Then, through discussion of multip le instances and disputes over ownership of plays which had 'fallen' and by considering the arguments advanced in the name of tow prominent eighteenth -century authors, Pierre-Laurent Buirette de Belloy and Pierre-Augustin Car on de Beaumarchais, it explores the specific meaning of droits d'auteur an d 'literary property [propriete litteraire]' sought by playwrights fro thei r fallen plays. Arguing that existing scholarship on literary property has looked only to the Book Trade and thus overemphasized the importance of Loc kean ideas of property, Kantian ideas of genius, and Smithian ideas of the market, it argues instead for an understanding of Old Regime literary prope rty as analogous among Enlightenment ideas, the status of men of letters, a nd the commercialization of public life on the eve of the Revolution.