FELETON GENRE IN WORLD LITERATURE: HISTORICAL EVOLUTION, POETICS, AND COMPARATIVE DISCOURSE PRACTICES

Abstract

The study examined the formation, historical evolution, and poetics of the feuilleton genre in world literature through a comparative literary framework. Historical-typological, comparative, discourse-analytic, and stylometric methods were applied; a corpus of 120 feuilletons and adjacent satirical journalistic texts was compiled from French, Russian, English, and German press materials dated 1800–2000. Data collection relied on bibliographic retrieval, digital-archive work, and a standardized coding protocol; findings were verified using statistical indicators (means, SD, p-values). The results showed that the feuilleton was defined by its material anchoring in the newspaper “basement” column, its rapid response to current socio-political agendas, its reliance on ironic-rhetorical devices, and its polemical strategies mediated through an authorial persona or mask. Comparative evidence indicated that the French tradition strongly linked the feuilleton to urban culture and theatrical-aesthetic commentary, whereas the Russian tradition integrated it with literary criticism and political satire; in English and German contexts the genre tended to converge with the essay and the newspaper column. The conclusion argued that the genre’s boundaries remained dynamic within a “satirical journalism—essay—criticism” triangle and that functional equivalents persisted in contemporary digital media formats. The study contributed to genre typology and to research on media–literature interaction by offering operational criteria for identifying feuilleton poetics across national traditions.