Project MUSE®: Nineteenth-Century French Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/137
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Nineteenth-Century French Studies.daily12024-03-28T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 29, no. 3 & 4 (2001) through current issueLatest Articles: Nineteenth-Century French StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Nineteenth-Century French Studies1536-01720146-7891Latest articles in Nineteenth-Century French Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Conceptualizing Trajectories of Readability
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/911797
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Qu'est-ce que comprendre un monde dans lequel on est compris?In his course at the Collège de France on 12 October 1982, Pierre Bourdieu discussed the kind of double existence that "une chose sociale" has. One of his key examples of a social thing was a book. He noted that there are certain books we might think of as dead, invoking the model of a lettre morte, a letter that never arrives at its destination. There are books that might best be thought of, he added, as "un livre mort ou un livre faussement vivant." These would be books "que personne ne lit ou que plus personne ne sait lire comme il demandait à être lu—le problème ne serait pas exactement le même" (Sociologie 231). It is not exactly the same thing when
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2024-03-28T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/137/image/coversmallConceptualizing Trajectories of Readability2023-11-16text/htmlen-USConceptualizing Trajectories of Readability2023-11-162023TWOProject MUSE®1293142024-03-28T00:00:00-05:002023-11-16Ballet and Celebrity at the Paris Opera, or the Dreams of the Rat
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/911798
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In Balzac's Les Comédiens sans le savoir, the provincial hero Gazonal learns a lesson from his cousin about how to make it in Paris. Entrepreneurs, inventors, and bankers are not those named as most likely to succeed—as might be expected—but instead an unassuming young woman casually strolling by the Passage de l'Opéra. Gazonal learns that she is a rat, or female ballet student who aspires to make a name for herself at the Académie royale de musique. "Elle sera rien ou tout, une grande danseuse ou une marcheuse, un nom célèbre ou une vulgaire courtisane," his cousin explains, emphasizing the high stakes of a dancer's career (1158).Shortly thereafter, they spot examples of both possible futures for the young rat.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2024-03-28T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/137/image/coversmallBallet and Celebrity at the Paris Opera, or the Dreams of the Rat2023-11-16text/htmlen-USBallet and Celebrity at the Paris Opera, or the Dreams of the Rat2023-11-162023TWOProject MUSE®834492024-03-28T00:00:00-05:002023-11-16Between Science and Sorcery: Reimagining Human and Animal Relationality in George Sand's La Petite Fadette
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/911799
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La Petite Fadette, part of George Sand's pastoral trilogy was, for a long time, considered a rosy, sentimental look at country life with simple language and glorified scenes of peasant life. The novel has recently received much-needed attention that treats it as something more than a frivolous piece devoid of deeper social and political messages. Kathryn Grossman, for instance, counters the standard ahistorical interpretation of the novel by arguing that for Sand, "applying the romantic technique of local color in a new way—to the portrayal of rural France—did not, however, compromise her political idealism"; the focus of La Petite Fadette is "not so much about country life as national reform" (20). Similarly
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2024-03-28T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/137/image/coversmallBetween Science and Sorcery: Reimagining Human and Animal Relationality in George Sand's La Petite Fadette2023-11-16text/htmlen-USBetween Science and Sorcery: Reimagining Human and Animal Relationality in George Sand's La Petite Fadette2023-11-162023TWOProject MUSE®675462024-03-28T00:00:00-05:002023-11-16The Initial Expression is the Final Impression: The First Sentence of Baudelaire's "Le Peintre de la vie moderne"
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/911800
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"Si la première phrase n'est pas écrite en vue de préparer cette impression finale, l'œuvre est manquée dès le début" (2: 329). This bold statement by Charles Baudelaire is as much a statement about the method of artistic production as it is a judgement on the potential fate of a work. It expresses both process and caveat; it functions as a spur to work and an obstacle to progress in artistic practice. To put things more precisely, the claim appears as a categorical imperative of sorts, regulating the duty of the artist. For Baudelaire, the artist must show that a part of a work must yield the whole, and conversely, the whole must be contained within its parts.This chiasmatic formulation can be refined
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2024-03-28T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/137/image/coversmallThe Initial Expression is the Final Impression: The First Sentence of Baudelaire's "Le Peintre de la vie moderne"2023-11-16text/htmlen-USThe Initial Expression is the Final Impression: The First Sentence of Baudelaire's "Le Peintre de la vie moderne"2023-11-162023TWOProject MUSE®806602024-03-28T00:00:00-05:002023-11-16"Confidences épistolaires de la Vénus publique": Real-time Communication, Voyeuristic Reading, and Social Media's Erotic Pre-History in the Petite Correspondance
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/911801
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In 1875, Le Figaro, a Parisian newspaper that was popular among the Parisian and provincial bourgeoisie,1 reinvented the petite correspondance column, which provided readers of its double Sunday edition with a space to send private messages in a way that was both more anonymous and more public than ever before. Using initials or a previously agreed upon pseudonym and the purchase of the paper, individuals could send each other missives without having to use addresses or go anywhere other than the offices of Le Figaro at 26 rue Drouot. The rich possibilities of this form for communication between illicit lovers (or in search of such lovers) quickly led to laments that the petite correspondance was not proper
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2024-03-28T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/137/image/coversmall"Confidences épistolaires de la Vénus publique": Real-time Communication, Voyeuristic Reading, and Social Media's Erotic Pre-History in the Petite Correspondance2023-11-16text/htmlen-US"Confidences épistolaires de la Vénus publique": Real-time Communication, Voyeuristic Reading, and Social Media's Erotic Pre-History in the Petite Correspondance2023-11-162023TWOProject MUSE®847692024-03-28T00:00:00-05:002023-11-16"Sans doute habituée à une existence sédentaire": Des Esseintes's Turtle and the Residue of Naturalism
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/911802
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Of the many episodes that make up Huysmans's À rebours, one of the strangest and most memorable is the scene in chapter four featuring an ornately decorated turtle. In this sequence, a lapidaire delivers to Fontenay a turtle that has been covered—at des Esseintes's request—in gold and gems. The aim of the decoration is to cool down the vividly colored carpet, to mediate its silver glow by casting its own golden brilliance. After some time, though, the turtle dies. It is not clear whether the weight of the gems has forced the reptile into immobility and then crushed it, or whether the gilding and associated fumes have poisoned its air supply, but whatever the precise physical cause, the turtle perishes under its
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2024-03-28T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/137/image/coversmall"Sans doute habituée à une existence sédentaire": Des Esseintes's Turtle and the Residue of Naturalism2023-11-16text/htmlen-US"Sans doute habituée à une existence sédentaire": Des Esseintes's Turtle and the Residue of Naturalism2023-11-162023TWOProject MUSE®718832024-03-28T00:00:00-05:002023-11-16Le discours médiatique transatlantique avant 1900: L'exemple de la première tournée de Sarah Bernhardt en Amérique
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/911803
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Le 15 octobre 1880, après un scandale qui a entrainé son départ de la Comédie-Française et après s'être consolidé une réputation de star internationale à Londres, Sarah Bernhardt s'embarque sur le paquebot de la compagnie transatlantique Amérique pour une tournée théâtrale de plus de six mois, pendant laquelle elle va parcourir les villes des États-Unis et du Canada, tout en séduisant le public, pour acquérir le statut d'une des artistes les mieux payées de son époque. Précédée par sa renommée d'actrice excentrique au tempérament sulfureux, la divine Sarah revient constamment dans les pages de la presse américaine, étant en égale mesure critiquée, blâmée, adulée et enviée. En même temps, les journalistes français
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2024-03-28T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/137/image/coversmallLe discours médiatique transatlantique avant 1900: L'exemple de la première tournée de Sarah Bernhardt en Amérique2023-11-16text/htmlen-USLe discours médiatique transatlantique avant 1900: L'exemple de la première tournée de Sarah Bernhardt en Amérique2023-11-162023TWOProject MUSE®639122024-03-28T00:00:00-05:002023-11-16Homeless Narrative in Jean Lorrain's Monsieur de Phocas
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/911804
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Coveting extinction—cultivating the pleasure of unpleasure—the Decadents believed that being sick unto death was better than being a brute who was ignorant of true beauty. "Decadent writers," as Barbara Spackman writes, "place themselves on the side of pathology and valorize physiological ills […] as the origin of psychic alterity" (vii–viii). Pedigreed by hyperesthesia, purified by an anorexia of the real, they sought to prolong the ephemeral moment when life elegantly slipped away. Disciples of Schopenhauer, they strove to perfect an art positioned on the threshold of death, where vitality's flame shone brightest before guttering and going out. Governed by the death drive, Decadent art estheticized experience
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2024-03-28T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/137/image/coversmallHomeless Narrative in Jean Lorrain's Monsieur de Phocas2023-11-16text/htmlen-USHomeless Narrative in Jean Lorrain's Monsieur de Phocas2023-11-162023TWOProject MUSE®566382024-03-28T00:00:00-05:002023-11-16