General & Miscellaneous Literary Criticism, French Literature, French History, European Art

Paris and the Nineteenth Century

Name: Paris and the Nineteenth Century
Author: Christopher Prendergast
ISBN: 9780631196945

by Christopher Prendergast

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Overview

Paris has long been the archetypal literary city. This identification reached its peak in the nineteenth century when Paris could reasonably fulfill Walter Benjamin's claimn for it: that it was the 'capital of the nineteenth century'. In this expansive and entertaining book Christopher Prendergast explores the way writers and others have identified with Paris and been identified with it. He moves between social and cultural history, literature, painting and photography and presents an exemplary series of readings (of Balzac, Hugo, Baudelaire, Michelet, Flaubert, Zola, Valles, Laforgue). Throughout Paris is both the city represented and the very problem of representation.

About the Author, Christopher Prendergast

Christopher Prendergast is currently Distinguished Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the Graduate School, City University of New York, and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He is the author of Balzac: Fiction and Melodrama and Paris Spectacle and editor of Nineteenth Century French Poetry.