Popular Literature from Nineteenth-Century France: English Translation
- Translators: Masha Belenky, Anne O’Neil-Henry
- Pages: 292
- Published: 2021
- ISBN: 9781603294966 (Paperback)
“As a thoughtfully curated, faithfully translated, and thoroughly annotated selection, Popular Literature from Nineteenth-Century France warrants inclusion in any undergraduate or graduate course on French or comparative nineteenth-century literature and culture, and especially those with particular focus on print media history and popular culture.”
—Nineteenth-Century French Studies
The city of Paris experienced rapid transformation in the middle of the nineteenth century: the population grew, industry and commerce increased, and barriers between social classes diminished. Innovations in printing and distribution gave rise to new mass-market genres: literary guidebooks known as tableaux de Paris and illustrated physiologies examined urban social types and fashions for a broad audience of Parisians hungry to explore and understand their changing society. The works in this volume offer a lively, humorous tour of the manners and characters of the flâneur (a leisurely wanderer), the grisette (a young working-class woman), the gamin (a street urchin), and more. While authors such as Paul de Kock are little known today, their works still open a window onto a vivid time and place.
List of Illustrations (ix)
Acknowledgments (xi)
Introduction (xiii)
Suggestions for Further Reading (xxxv)
Note on the Translations (xxxvii)
Jules Janin
“Asmodeus,” from Paris; or, The Book of a Hundred and One (3)
Gustave d’Outrepont
“The Gamin of Paris,” from Paris; or, The Book of a Hundred and One (19)
Eugénie Foa
“The Fashionable Woman and the Elegant Woman in 1833,” from Paris; or, The Book of a Hundred and One (42)
Eugène Scribe and Henri Dupin
The Stockbroker’s Son (51)
Delphine de Girardin
“Letter 27,” from Parisian Letters by the Vicomte de Launay (108)
Paul de Kock
“A Grisette Party,” from Parisian Manners (121)
Auguste de Lacroix
“The Flâneur,” from The French Depicted by Themselves: A Moral Encyclopedia of the Nineteenth Century (139)
Honoré de Balzac
“The Proper Woman,” from The French Depicted by Themselves: A Moral Encyclopedia of the Nineteenth Century (162)
Louis Huart
Physiology of the Grisette (185)
Physiology of the Flâneur (207)
Henry Monnier
Physiology of the Bourgeois (229)
Works Cited in Headnotes and Footnotes (249)
“Popular Literature from Nineteenth-Century France is extremely compelling and pedagogically exciting.”
—Alexandra Wettlaufer, University of Texas, Austin
“Popular Literature from Nineteenth-Century France will quickly become a reference for instructors and researchers across disciplinary lines.”
—Andrea Goulet, University of Pennsylvania
