Comments on French Television and Literature

This essay examines the relationship between French television and literature (especially French) between 1950 and the early 1970s. The study opens with a study of television's effects on viewer's reading tastes in literature. A brief description is then given of the more important programs or series produced during the period in question: from book review and poetry programs of various formats to drama and dramatic adaptations of novels and short stories. The essay concludes with a quantitative study of dramatic productions, a field where French television excels; special attention is given to French works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (NRS)