Literature and Material Culture from Balzac to Proust: The Collection and Consumption of Curiosities (Cambridge Studies in French, Series Number 62)

Watson, Janell

ISBN 10: 0521661560 / ISBN 13: 9780521661560

Published by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK New York, 2000

About this Item

x + 228 pp, acknowledgments, Introduction, 7 chapters, notes, bibliography, index. 6.1" x 9.2" black cloth boardds, gilt spine letters, in illustrated, unclipped DJ with acetate protector. Binding tight, pages clean, umarked, exterior unmarked. Size: Slim Octavo.

Seller Inventory # 009628

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Literature and Material Culture from Balzac to Proust: The Collection and Consumption of Curiosities (Cambridge Studies in French, Series Number 62)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK New York
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521661560
• ISBN 13: 9780521661560
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Book Type: Book
• Seller catalogs:
  • LITERARY CRITICISM

About this title

Synopsis

This book addresses the issues of collecting, consuming, classifying and describing the curiosities, antiques and objets d'art that proliferated in French literary texts during the last decades of the nineteenth century. After Balzac made such issues significant in canonical literature, the Goncourt brothers, Huysmans, Mallarmé and Maupassant celebrated their golden age. Flaubert and Zola scorned them. Rachilde and Lorrain perverted them. Proust commemorated their last moments of glory. Focusing on the bibelot (the modern French term for knick-knack, curiosity or other collectible), Janell Watson shows how the sudden prominence given to curiosities and collecting in nineteenth-century literature signals a massive change in attitudes to the world of goods, which in turn restructured the literary text according to the practical logic of daily life, calling into question established scholarly notions of order. Her study makes an important contribution to the literary history of material culture.

Review

"a complex and fascinating story...a memorable book that is indispensable for readers interested in the study of consumer culture and in the connection between realism and cultural production in the nineteenth century." L'Esprit Createur