Birth and death in nineteenth-century French culture / edited by Nigel Harkness ... [et al.].

• Superior document: Faux titre, 301
• Author: Society of Dix-Neuviémistes. Annual Conference
• TeilnehmendeR: Harkness, Nigel, 1967-; Society of Dix-Neuviémistes. Annual Conference
• Year of Publication: 2007
• Language: English; French
• Series: Faux titre ; no. 301.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (261 p.)
• Notes: "The essays contained in this volume were first presented at the third annual conference of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes, which took place at Queen's University Belfast in April 2005."--Acknowledgments.

This volume draws contributors from around the globe who represent the full range of approaches to scholarship in nineteenth-century French studies: historical, literary, cultural, art historical, philosophical, and comparative. The theme of the volume – Birth and Death – is one with particular resonance for nineteenth-century French studies, since the nineteenth century is commonly perceived as an age of new life and renovation. It is the epoch that witnessed an efflorescence of industrial and artistic progress, the birth of the individual and the birth of the novel, and the creation of an urban population in the major demographic shift from the rural provinces to Paris. At the same time, however, it is the century of Decadence and degeneration theory, marked by a prominent morbid aesthetic in the artistic sphere and a fascination with criminality, moral decay and the pathologization of racial and sexual minorities in the scientific discourses. It is also the century in which reflection on processes of artistic creation begins to problematize concepts of mimetic representation, the function of the author and the status of the text. In the context of the dialectical quality of nineteenth-century French culture, caught between an obsession with the new and innovative and a paranoid sense of its own encroaching decay, the twin themes of birth and death open onto a variety of issues – literary, social, historical, artistic – which are explored, interrogated and reassessed in the essays contained in this volume.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction / Lisa Downing , Nigel Harkness , Sonya Stephens and Tim Unwin -- George Sand: la genèse des fins de romans / Claudine Grossir -- Flaubert, Apuleius and Ovid: The Genesis of a Recurring Theme / Stephen Goddard -- Perdue en traduction: Translation, Betrayal and Death in Mérimée’s Carmen / Larry Duffy -- Le Tombeau de la Poésie: Strategies of Textual Resurrection in Mallarmé and Banville / Davi Devans -- Wilde’s Salomé: Tenses, Tension and Progression in Salomé’s Final Monologue / Peter Cogman -- Figures de l’artiste et comédiens du réel: de la difficile naissance à l’implacable mort dans La Comédie humaine / Isabelle Michelot -- Soeur Philomène ou comment la mort s’invite à l’hôpital / Barbara Giraud -- Death for Beginners: Nineteenth-Century Katabatic Narratives for Young Readers / Kiera Vaclavik -- Stendhal’s Rebellious Mothers and the Fight Against Death-by-Maternity / Maria Scott -- La Mort de Madame de Vernon et les deux dénouements de Delphine: invention romanesque et réminiscences maternelles chez Madame de Staël / Catherine Dubeau -- Midwifery and Malpractice in Fécondité: Zola’s Fictional History of Problematical Maternities / Carmenk. Mayer-Robin -- L’érotisme cristallin de Théophile Gautier: étude de la figure de la ‘morte amoureuse’ dans les contes fantastiques / Nathalie Dumas -- L’Évangile de la pourriture selon Saint Huysmans: Lydwine de Schiedam / Philippe Berthier -- Une esthétique de la mort au dix-neuvième siècle: Alphonse Daudet / Isabelle Droit -- Selon Max Nordau: le poème naturel du corps de Mallarmé / Pascal Caron -- The Aesthetics of Self-Skeletonization in James Ensor / Claire Moran -- Notes on Contributors -- Index.