Paris romantique: tableaux d’une ville disparue par Sylvain Ledda (review)

Reviews 289 Vertières relève des stratégies d’oubli ou de la censure des élites. Pour faire tomber ce silence, Le Glaunec part de la difficulté de narrer cette bataille, quasi inexistante dans les dictionnaires des noms propres. L’écriture de cette histoire devient alors prétentieuse, car“elle confronte l’historien à ses silences, à ses apories et aux problèmes de sa méthodologie“ (31). L’auteur réévalue à sa juste valeur le récit d’origine de l’historien haïtien Thomas Madiou et l’honore du même coup pour avoir trop longtemps été la seule source sur Vertières et Capois-la-mort, le protagoniste par excellence de cette bataille.Vertières comme acte final d’une révolution atlantique est amplement illustrée, aussi bien que la tentative de sa reconstitution en ce qui concerne son lieu d’origine, ses protagonistes principaux, ses mythes et l’héroïsme qu’elle génère. L’armée indigène a le mérite d’offrir aux lecteurs l’illustration de nombreux cas de stratégies de silence sur Vertières à la lumière de l’historiographie française et de l’histoire nationale haïtienne. C’est un ouvrage à lire si on veut comprendre comment les silences opèrent et entrent dans les processus de production historique. South Plainfield High School (NJ) Claudy Delné Ledda, Sylvain. Paris romantique: tableaux d’une ville disparue. Paris: CNRS, 2013. ISBN 978-2-271-07928-2. Pp. 256. 22 a. This engaging book will be of interest to scholars of nineteenth-century French literature as well as cultural historians with a particular interest in urban culture of the early nineteenth century.While it is a social history of Parisian life and culture during this period, its insights into the artistic and intellectual world give it broad interest and assumes a certain familiarity with nineteenth-century Romanticism in literature. Ledda’s purpose is not to paint a strictly historical description. Instead, he offers a view of the Paris known to Romantic writers Hugo, Balzac, Musset, Vigny, Nerval, Dumas, and others. Because this period is one of changing moral and cultural values, the author maintains that urban phenomena take on a new importance, making the “tableaux” of Paris found in the writings of these authors especially valuable. The author’s premise is to rediscover this disappeared Paris in the light of Romanticism and to show the interplay between urban reality and artistic representation. Ledda anchors his narrative in the first third of the nineteenth century, devoting three chapters to the Romantic movement in Paris. This includes a lively account of the battle between Romanticism and Classicism at the uproarious premiere of Hugo’s Hernani. Two other chapters outline the origins of Romanticism as a literary theory, and Paris’s position as the artistic capital of Europe. These chapters are relatively brief; our interest is captured not so much by the literary history, but by the original and rare glimpses into various events told through anecdotes and little-known details. The principal originality of this book, however, is its depictions of how Parisian places, trends, and phenomena provided multiple sources of inspiration to Romantic authors. Each chapter is devoted to a particular historic or cultural event, famous person, or aspect of society. After providing detailed information about these facts and events, Ledda reveals how they appeared in Romantic literature. Recounting the life and career of the infamous chief of police, Eugène-François Vidocq, for example, Ledda shows how he was Balzac’s inspiration for Vautrin in La comédie humaine and for Hugo’s characters Valjean and Javert in Les misérables. Places, as well as trends like the Tuileries gardens and “la vie de bohème,” are also central in works by Musset, Balzac, and Dumas. This account of a broad range of phenomena of the period makes for fascinating reading— from flaneurs strolling in Parisian parks, dandyism, the boulevards, the cholera epidemic, miserable living conditions in poor districts, the construction of barricades, and famous crimes and criminals. Ledda’s study is realistic while at the same time nostalgic—aptly recreating a lost era in the history of...