Perfume on the Page in Nineteenth-Century France / / Cheryl Krueger.

• VerfasserIn: Krueger, Cheryl ,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2023]; 2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: University of Toronto Romance Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (382 p.) :; 15 colour illustrations, 29 b&w illustrations, 1 b&w figure

Despite long-standing assertions that languages, including French and English, cannot sufficiently communicate the experience of smell, much of France's nineteenth-century literature has gained praise for its memorable evocation of odours. As French perfume was industrialized, democratized, cosmeticized, and feminized in the nineteenth century, stories of fragrant scent trails aligned perfume with toxic behaviour and viewed a woman's scent as something alluring, but also something to be controlled. Drawing on a wealth of resources, Perfume on the Page in Nineteenth-Century France explores how fiction and related writing on olfaction meet, permeate, and illuminate one another. The book examines medical tracts, letters, manuscripts, posters, print advertisements, magazine articles, perfume manuals, etiquette books, interviews, and encounters with fragrant materials themselves. Cheryl Krueger explores how the olfactory language of a novel or poem conveys the distinctiveness of a text, its unique relationship to language, its style, and its ways of engaging the reader: its signature scent. Shedding light on the French perfume culture that we know today, Perfume on the Page in Nineteenth-Century France follows the scent trails that ultimately challenge us to read perfume and literature in new ways.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Notes on Translations, Sources, and Previously Published Material -- Introduction: Something in the Air -- 1 In a Violet Sillage -- 2 The Language of Flowers and Silent Things -- 3 Confused Words? -- 4 The Osmazome of Literature -- 5 Perfumed Letters and Signature Scents -- 6 Smelling (of) Iris -- 7 Decadent Perfuming -- Epilogue: Cooked Apples and Exotic Perfumes -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index