Popular Literature from Nineteenth-Century France: French Text
- Editors: Masha Belenky, Anne O’Neil-Henry
- Pages: 300
- Published: 2021
- ISBN: 9781603294935 (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 (xxxiii)
Note on the Texts (xxxv)
Jules Janin
“Asmodée,” from Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un (3)
Gustave d’Outrepont
“Le gamin de Paris,” from Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un (20)
Eugénie Foa
“La femme à la mode et la femme élégante en 1833,” from Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un (43)
Eugène Scribe et Henri Dupin
Le fils de l’agent de change (52)
Delphine de Girardin
“Lettre XXVII,” from Lettres parisiennes du vicomte de Launay (110)
Paul de Kock
“Un bal de grisettes,” from Mœurs parisiennes (123)
Auguste de Lacroix
“Le flâneur,” from Les Français peints par eux-mêmes: Encyclopédie morale du dix-neuvième siècle (143)
Honoré de Balzac
“La femme comme il faut,” from Les Français peints par eux-mêmes: Encyclopédie morale du dix-neuvième siècle (168)
Louis Huart
Physiologie de la grisette (191)
Physiologie du flaneur (215)
Henry Monnier
Physiologie du bourgeois (238)
Works Cited in Headnotes and Footnotes (261)
“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
