The French Drama Revolution: Political Economy and Literary Production, 1700-1900

TL;DR

This study analyzes the evolution of French drama from 1700 to 1900, revealing significant thematic shifts post-Revolution, especially the rise of bourgeois themes, and explores their relationship with economic growth and political change.

Contribution

It applies Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Jensen-Shannon Divergence to quantify thematic changes in French drama over two centuries, linking cultural shifts to economic and political transformations.

Findings

Profound change in drama themes after 1789

Emergence of bourgeois themes in late 18th century

Correlation between drama topics and French GDP

Abstract

This paper investigates the changing nature of French drama between 1700-1900 using Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Jensen-Shannon Divergence. Results indicate that the topical distribution of French drama changed profoundly after the French Revolution, particularly between 1789 and 1850. Bourgeois themes emerged among the most prevalent topics since the late 18th century. To assess the coevolution of drama and economic growth, I plot the yearly prevalence of topics alongside French GDP between 1700-1900, and discuss these changes in light of the political and economic changes prompted by the French Revolution and the industrialization of the country.