Synopses & Reviews
Despite the scholarship and political activism devoted to keeping the memory of the Paris Commune alive, there still remains much ignorance both in France and elsewhere. Between 20,000 and 35,000 people were killed on the streets of Paris in just the final week of the traumatic civil war of 1871. Colette Wilson identifies a critical blind-spot in French studies and employs new critical approaches to neglected texts, marginalized aspects of the illustrated press, early photography, and a selection of novels by Emile Zola. This book will be of interest to students and academics studying France in the 19th century from a number of different perspectives: war and revolution studies, cultural studies, history and cultural memory, literature, art history, photography, the illustrated press, city studies, and human geography.
Synopsis
This book is a work of original scholarship that makes a strong contribution to our understanding of French cultural memory. Despite the scholarship and political activism devoted to keeping the memory of the Paris Commune alive, there still remains much ignorance both in France and elsewhere, about the traumatic civil war of 1871 and particularly about the terrible retribution meted out by the French state on its own citizens; some 20,000 to 35,000 people were killed on the streets of Paris in just the final week of the conflict.
Colette E. Wilson identifies a critical blindspot in French studies which since the 1960s has focused primarily on representations of the Commune by writers and artists who were either Communards themselves or at least sympathetic to the Communard cause. New critical approaches are instead set to work on neglected texts (by Maxime Du Camp), marginalised aspects of the illustrated press (Le Monde illustr ), early photography (Charles Marville, Edouard-Denis Baldus and Charles Soulier) and a selection of novels by Emile Zola. Wilson writes clearly and authoritatively and her book will be of interest to students and academics working on France in the nineteenth century from a number of different perspectives - war and revolution studies, cultural studies, history and cultural memory, literature, art history, photography, the illustrated press, city studies and human geography. The book will appeal equally to all lovers of Paris who wish to know and understand more about the city's turbulent past.
Synopsis
Colette Wilson writes clearly and authoritatively and her original, scholarly and beautifully illustrated book makes a strong contribution to our understanding of the Paris Commune, its aftermath in the early years of the Third Republic and French cultural memory overall
About the Author
Colette E. Wilson is an independent researcher and lecturer in French literary and cultural studies
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations * List of Tables * Acknowledgements * Introduction * The Paris Commune 1871 * Remembering and Forgetting the Commune * The Case Studies * Le Monde Illustré: Images Between the Lines * An Illustrated World View * Language and Icons, Memories, and Myths * The Fire in the Key: The Memory of the Image * The Moral Modern Metropolis: A Walker's Guide * Du Camp's Paris: Between History, Memory, and Reportage * Reconstructing the Archive in Paris: Ses Organes * The Commune as Prostitute in Les Convulsions de Paris * Zola's
Art of Memory * Le Ventre de Paris * L'assommoir * Une Page D'amour * Paris and The Commune in the Photographic Imagination * Politics, Memory, and Aesthetics in Soulier's Paris Incendié, Mai 1871 * Changing Perspectives in Baldus's les Monuments Principaux de la France * Pictures at an Exhibition: Marville's Hygienic View * Conclusion * Appendix: Chronology of Key Events 1871-1880 * Bibliography * Index