Reading Order
Chatterton Reading Order
Chatterton (1835) by Alfred de Vigny is the French Romantic play that most explicitly argues for the poet's claim on society — a three-act drama about the historical Thomas Chatterton (1752–70), the English boy-poet who poisoned himself at seventeen after being refused a minor government position, and about the Romantic argument that the poet is a being of exceptional spiritual quality whose destruction by bourgeois society is not an accident but a symptom of society's deepest failure. Vigny's Chatterton is not a historical play — the setting is London but the characters are symbolic, and the plot (Chatterton falls in love with the Quaker girl Kitty Bell who shelters him, is betrayed by a corrupt patron who publishes his work as his own, and kills himself) is largely invented. The play was a theatrical event: Sarah Bernhardt would later play Kitty Bell, and the play's central speech — Chatterton's explanation of what it means to be a poet in a world organized by trade — was the Romantic manifesto of poetry's claim to dignity. Vigny published a preface to the play in which he argued for the establishment of state pensions for poets, a proposal that was mocked at the time but that defines the political program implicit in the entire tradition of French Romantic writing about the artist's social position.
Where to start
Chatterton (1835) — the play is short (three acts, about 100 pages) and the most accessible of Vigny's works. The Dover Publications dual-language French-English edition is the easiest entry point. Read the preface alongside the play — Vigny's argument for state support for poets is the explicit political claim that the drama implies. The historical Thomas Chatterton's own poems are interesting context but not necessary for the play.
Complete Chatterton Book List
- 1Buy
Chatterton
Alfred de Vigny·1835·Premiered at the Comédie-Française, February 12, 1835 — the same year as Vigny's Servitude et grandeur militaires. The play was written rapidly, in a few weeks, and was immediately understood as Vigny's argument for the poet's dignity. The character of Kitty Bell was created with the actress Marie Dorval, Vigny's lover, in mind.
Chatterton — Frequently Asked Questions
Who was the real Thomas Chatterton?
Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770) was an English boy-poet from Bristol who composed a series of forged medieval poems attributed to a fictional fifteenth-century monk, Thomas Rowley, and sent them to Horace Walpole (who recognized them as fakes), to literary magazines, and to antiquarians who were briefly deceived. Chatterton came to London in 1770 at seventeen hoping to make his fortune as a writer; unable to find a patron or adequate income, and having been rejected for a minor position, he poisoned himself with arsenic in August 1770 at the age of seventeen years and nine months. The story of Chatterton's brief life was immediately transformed into a Romantic myth: the boy-genius destroyed by a philistine society, the prodigy cut off before his powers could develop, the martyr of the artistic vocation. Keats addressed him in the dedication to Endymion ('the most English of poets'); Wordsworth called him 'the marvellous boy'; Coleridge wrote about him; Henry Wallis's painting Chatterton (1856) — a young man dead on his garret bed, the arsenic packets on the floor — became one of the iconic images of Victorian art. Vigny's play (1835) is the most important French adaptation of the Chatterton myth, and it is notable that Vigny was more interested in the argument (the poet's claim on society) than in historical accuracy (his Chatterton is almost entirely fictional).
Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.