The Collector in Nineteenth-Century French Literature
Representation, Identity, Knowledge
©2012
Monographs
VI,
242 Pages
Series:
French Studies of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Volume 32
Summary
The collector was one of the archetypal figures of the nineteenth-century French cultural imagination. During the July Monarchy (1830-48) a new culture of collecting emerged, which continued to develop over the course of the century and which attracted the attention of a wide range of social commentators and writers. From the sketch-writing of the 1830s to the late nineteenth-century decadent fictions of Jean Lorrain, from Balzac’s Cousin Pons to Proust’s Charles Swann, the literature of the period abounds in examples of men (and occasionally women) afflicted with what the Larousse Grand Dictionnaire called in 1869 ‘la collectionnomanie’.
This book examines these representations of the collector. It shows that woven into them are fundamental anxieties generated by the experience of modernity, involving the nature of identity and selfhood, the relentless accumulation of commodities in a capitalist system of production and the (in)ability of language to translate experience accurately.
This book examines these representations of the collector. It shows that woven into them are fundamental anxieties generated by the experience of modernity, involving the nature of identity and selfhood, the relentless accumulation of commodities in a capitalist system of production and the (in)ability of language to translate experience accurately.
Details
- Pages
- VI, 242
- Publication Year
- 2012
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783035302073
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9783034307574
- DOI
- 10.3726/978-3-0353-0207-3
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2012 (February)
- Keywords
- late nineteenth-century decadent fictions of Jean Lorrain, from Balzacs Cousin Pons to Prousts Charles Swann Larousse Grand Dictionnaire called in 1869 la collectionnomanie The Collector in Nineteenth-Century French Literature late nineteenth-century decadent fictions of Jean Lorrain, from Balzac's Cousin Pons to Proust's Charles Swann
- Published
- Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, 2012. VI, 242 pp.
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