Zola, Jourdain and the architectonics of modernity.

Abstract

Selected from papers given at the first annual conference of the Society of Dix-Neuvièmistes, the nineteen essays in this volume contribute diversely towards a revision and a reconceptualisation of nineteenth-century France. Many adopt interdisciplinary methodologies attentive to the interplay between literature, history, art, popular and high culture, politics and science. The wide-ranging discussion of issues such as identity, alterity, commemoration, cultural history, tensions between centre and margins, mimesis and representation, suggest that no simplistic snapshot of this century is possible. Opening with a section on the modernity of the nineteenth century, the volume continues with sections on cultural transfer, war, readings and re-readings, and concludes with two essays on questions of identity. The critical reappraisals put forward here offer us various insights into directions in which nineteenth-century French studies are heading at the turn of another new century.