France has abandoned the term «nègre littéraire». Finally

A Facebook friend once wrote to me that in France, a ghostwriter is called a "nègre". It started in 1845 when an offended Jean-Baptiste Jacquot, wrote a pamphlet to ridicule Dumas and his collaborators. Rumor has it that Dumas did not hire this monsieur, which turned him against himself.

In his pamphlet, Jean-Baptiste Jacquot called Dumas's ghostwriters "negroes," implying that hired writers worked hard as black slaves on plantations. Gradually, the French began to refer to all ghostwriters as such. The concept of "nègre" even ended up in some dictionaries.

Russian noblemen, who were studying in France at the time, brought this term to the Russian Empire, from where it migrated to the Soviet Union and is still used in Runet in the form of "literary negro" or abbreviated "litnegre".

Before Jean-Baptiste Jacquot's pamphlet, gostwriters in France were called "plume" (pen) or "prête-plume" (pen holder). Voltaire at the same time called the ghostwriter "blanchisseur" (bleacher), which is apparently related to the stages of work on the text (draft-final copy). Publishers of the time used the term "teinturier" (cleaner, bleach). A speechwriter in France is still called a quill (plume). 

In 2017, the concept of "nègre" was removed from the dictionary of the French Academy and replaced by the old prête-plume (pen holder) on the recommendation of the General Delegation of the French Language and Languages of France. Colloquial speech is slowly being pulled up behind the literary norm. 

More can be read in the French-language Wikipedia and the sources it cites.

N. T.


Change: Oct. 18, 2024, 12:53 p.m.