Cultural depictions of Napoleon


Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, has become a worldwide cultural icon generally associated with tactical brilliance, ambition and political power. His distinctive features and costume have made him a very recognizable figure in popular culture.
He has been portrayed in many works of fiction, his depiction varying greatly with the author's perception of the historical character. In the 1927 film Napoleon, young general Bonaparte is portrayed as a heroic visionary. On the other hand, he has been occasionally reduced to a stock character, depicted as short and bossy, sometimes comically so.

Literature and theatre

Napoleon plays an indirect, yet important, part in Alexandre Dumas' novel The Count of Monte Cristo. The novel starts in 1815 with Napoleon exiled on the island of Elba. Here we learn that he hands a letter to the protagonist Edmond Dantes to give to one of his chief supporters in Paris - Nortier De Villefort, the president of a Bonapartist club. Dantes is unaware that Villefort is an agent of the exiled Emperor and that the letter Napoleon handed him contained instructions and plans about Napoleon's planned return to Paris. Dantes's rivals include Gérard De Villefort, the opportunistic son of Nortier, who uses the letter to frame Dantes and have him imprisoned in the Chateau d'If until he escapes after 14 years and seeks vengeance upon those who wronged him.
Napoleon features prominently in the BBC Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventure World Game, in which the Second Doctor must avert a plot to change history so that Napoleon is victorious. In an alternate timeline created by the assassination of the Duke of Wellington prior to Waterloo, Napoleon is persuaded to march on to Russia after the victory of Waterloo, but he dies shortly afterwards, his empire having become so overextended that the various countries collapse back into the separate nations they were before, thus degenerating into a state of perpetual warfare..
Other depictions of Napoleon in literature include:

Film

See also:

Places

Geography

Napoleon's height

British propaganda of the time depicted Napoleon as of smaller than average height and the image of him as a small man persists in modern Britain. Confusion has sometimes arisen because of different values for the French inch of the time and for the Imperial inch.; he has been cited as being from, which made him the height of the average French male at that time, and up to tall, which is above average for the period Royal Navy Rear Admiral Frederick Lewis Maitland, who had daily contact with Napoleon on his ship for twenty-three days in 1815, states in his memoirs that he was about. Some historians believe that the reason for the mistake about his size at death came from use of an obsolete French yardstick. Napoleon was a champion of the metric system and had no use for the old yardsticks. It is more likely that he was, the height he was measured at on St. Helena, since he would have most likely been measured with an English yardstick rather than a yardstick of the Old French Regime.
Napoleon's nickname of le petit caporal has added to the confusion, as some non-Francophones have mistakenly interpreted petit by its literal meaning of "small". In fact, it is an affectionate term reflecting on his camaraderie with ordinary soldiers. Napoleon also surrounded himself with the soldiers of his elite guard, required to be 1.83 m or taller, making him look smaller in comparison.
Napoleon's name has been lent to the Napoleon complex, a colloquial term describing an alleged type of inferiority complex which is said to affect some people who are physically short. The term is used more generally to describe people who are driven by a perceived handicap to overcompensate in other aspects of their lives.

The Napoleon Delusion

Napoleon Bonaparte is one of the most famous individuals in the Western world. As delusional patients sometimes believe themselves to be an important or grandiose figure, a patient claiming to be Napoleon has been a common stereotype in popular culture for delusions of this nature.
This cliché has itself been parodied: