The Post-Romantic Era Andrew J
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The Post-RomantiC Era Andrew J. Counter, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge 1. General Julie Townsend, The Choreography of Modernism in France: La Danseuse, 1830–1930, Oxford, Legenda, 144 pp., considers the multiple symbolic resonances of the female dancer as the cynosure of male sexual and aesthetic fantasy, in the writings of Émile Zola (25–33) and Stéphane Mallarmé (44–66), among others. Ruth Harris, The Man On Devil’s Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that Divided France, London, Allen Lane, 542 pp., is an important new account of the Dreyfus Affair arguing for a more nuanced understanding of the motivations and worldviews of its principal actors, with chapters dedicated to the role of Zola (105–32), Maurice Barrès (201–13), and the salonnières, including Gyp, of both parties (273–95). Dominique Pety, Poétique de la collection au XIXe siècle: du document de l’historien au bibelot de l’esthète, Paris-Ouest U.P., 364 pp., is an extensive and wide-ranging examination of the historical practice of collecting, as well as of its symbolic value in the works of a number of authors relevant to our period, including Baudelaire, Flaubert, Huysmans, Mallarmé, Maupassant, and Zola. Karin Becker, Le Dandysme littéraire en France au XIXe siècle, Orléans, Paradigme, 186 pp., offers a somewhat pedestrian account of the movement from a fashionable, superficial dandyism to a literary dandyism based on intellectual distinction, tracing the emergence of the latter in the work of a number of figures relevant to our period, including Barbey d’Aurevilly (96–107), Baudelaire (108–26), Montesquiou (130–36), Huysmans (136–48), and Villiers de L’Isle-Adam (148–56). Isabelle Krzywkowski, Machines à écrire: littérature et technologies du XIXe au XXIe siècle, Grenoble, ELLUG, 315 pp., follows the evolution of literary technologies and literary writers’ own attitudes towards those technologies, positing a historical movement throughout the 19th c. whereby writing machines became a privileged theme and symbol of modernity. Claude-Pierre Perez, Les Infortunés de l’imagination: aventures et avatars d’un personnage conceptuel de Baudelaire aux postmodernes, Saint-Denis, Vincennes U.P., 339 pp., attempts to chart the vicissitudes of the concept of ‘Imagination’ from the mid 19th c. onwards, and to understand its eventual disappearance from the critical discourse of the 20th c., offering in the process meditations on a number of writers from our period including Baudelaire, Flaubert, Rimbaud, and Schwob. Emmanuel Pierrat, Accusés Baudelaire, Flaubert, levez-vous! Napoléon III censure les lettres, Brussels, Versaille, 214 pp., considers the year 1857 as a pivotal moment in the history of censorship, situating the trials of Flaubert, Baudelaire, and Eugène Sue in the legal and moral context of the day, and assessing the troubled legacy of these trials in subsequent struggles concerning the morality of the printed word. Carol Rifelj, Coiffures: Hair in Nineteenth-Century French Literature and Culture, Newark, Delaware U.P., 297 pp., is at once a cultural history of 19th-c. hairstyles and an account of their semiotics in and beyond literary texts, and offers readings of a number of writers relevant to our period, including Baudelaire, Villiers, Flaubert, and (extensively) Maupassant and Zola. Susan Hiner, Accessories to Modernity: Fashion and the Feminine in Nineteenth-Century France, UPP, 281 pp., suggests that in addition to the statements it made about the wearer’s status and femininity, women’s fashion in 19th-c. France accomplished The Nineteenth Century 121 important yet subtle ideological work and was thus an essential part of the construction of modernity, a process which may be seen at work in a range of literary figures including Zola, Jules and Edmond de Goncourt, and Octave Uzanne. C. Haynes, ‘The Politics of Authorship: The Effects of Literary Property Law on Author- Publisher Relations’, NCFS, 39:99–118, considers the attitudes towards literary property and copyright law of a number of late 19th-c. figures, including Daudet, Zola, and the Goncourt brothers. C. Samindayar-Perrin, ‘Stratégies génériques dans l’écriture journalistique du XIXe siècle’, Romantisme, 147:121–34, shows how the exigencies of newspaper publication influenced the generic and formal choices of a number of major writers relevant to our period, notably Baudelaire. E. G. Carlston, ‘German Vices: Sexual / Linguistic Inversions in Fin-de-Siècle France’, RR, 100, 2009:279–305, departs from a reading of Armand Dubarry’s 1896 novel Les Invertis to consider late 19th-c. representations of sexual inversion in general, paying particular attention to the supposed Germanic origins of homosexuality, and the related notion that homosexuals were naturally predisposed to treachery. M. Murphy, ‘Becoming Cosmopolitan: Viewing and Reviewing the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 32:21–46, explores the tension between cosmopolitanism conceived as urbane detachment on the one hand or connective openness on the other, as manifested in the responses of a variety of cultural figures, including Baudelaire and Maxime Du Camp, to the exhibition. 2. Poetry Claude Zilberberg, Cheminements du poème: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Valéry, Jouve, Limoges, Lambert-Lucas, 345 pp., comprises very extended, broadly philological and often perceptive, close readings of one poem by each of the four title authors, including Baudelaire’s ‘La Mort des pauvres’ (15–146) and Arthur Rimbaud’s ‘Bonne pensée du matin’ (151–90). La Poésie jubilatoire: Rimbaud, Verlaine, et l’ ‘Album zutique’, ed. Seth Whidden, Garnier, 371 pp., offers a thematically and methodologically diverse approach to the topic, and contains the following chapters: S. Whidden, ‘“J’aime de cet objet la saveur désolée”: goûts et dégoûts zutiques’ (7–11); M. Pakenham, ‘Une revue d’avant-garde au lendemain de 1870: La Renaissance littéraire et artistique, dirigée par Émile Blémont. Chapitre IV: “Bonshommes et Zutistes”’ (13–32); B. Teyssèdre, ‘Essai de chronologie des textes de Rimbaud dans l’Album zutique’ (33–52); B. Teyssèdre, ‘Appendice sur la méthode microcontextuelle: l’exemple du Petit Ramponneau’ (53–64); D. Saint-Amand, Genèse du zutisme’ (65–82); L. Cuillé, ‘Album de table et coin zutique: des stratégies de légitimation’ (83–99); D. Ducoffre, ‘Anthologie de textes utiles à la compréhension des parodies zutiques’ (101–17); A. Bernadet, ‘Manières zutistes, la signature au pluriel: Valade, Cros, Rimbaud et Cie.’ (119–36); A. Chevrier, ‘Musique et chansons dans l’Album zutique’ (137–72); P. Rocher, ‘Le Sonnet du trou de cul et la poétique de l’obscène’ (173–210); A. Viala, ‘Remarques sur la Fête galante de Rimbaud’ (211–23); S. Whidden, ‘Sur la parodie en expansion du zutiste Rimbaud: le contraste entre Vu à Rome et Fête galante’ (225–40); R. St-Clair, ‘“Soyons chrétiens!”? Mémoire, anticapitalisme et communauté dans Paris’ (241–59); B. Claisse, ‘Le “zut” à Louis-Xavier de Ricard: un prélude aux Illuminations?’ (261–66); S. Murphy, ‘L’angelot maudit ou comment ratisbonifier des vers profondément nuls’ (267–94); B. de Cornulier, ‘Post-scriptum: où l’ange fait caca’ (295–98); C. Lhermelier, ‘“Elle met à la bouche une saveur étrange”: Germain Nouveau, le Sonnet de la langue’ (299–316); D. Ducoffre, ‘Coppée, Rimbaud et puis Verlaine’ (317–26); J.-L. Aroui, ‘Métrique et intertextes dans le Pantoum négligé’ (327–60). R.-F. Lack, ‘L’École des correspondances: Lautréamont et Rimbaud’, Dix-Neuf, 14:13–19, considers the presence in the work of Lautréamont and Rimbaud of intertextual connections .