The Paris Commune of 1871 in Selected Texts of French Prose Fiction

<p>The thesis consists essentially of a consideration of the Paris Commune of 1871 as represented in the following texts: l'Apprentie by Gustave Geffroy; l'Ami de l'Ordre by Jerome and Jean Tharaud; Bas les Coeurs and l'Epaulette by Georges Darien; la Colonne and Philemon vieux de la vieille by Lucien Descaves; les Massacres de Paris by Jean Cassou. With two exceptions (Bas les Coeurs (1889) and les Massacres de Paris (1935)) these works appeared during the opening fifteen years of the twentieth century. In addition to its obvious function of introducing the principal authors discussed, the Introduction provides background information to (and attempts to set the tone for) material examined in the main body of the thesis. Chapters one and Two, devoted to Gustave Geffroy and the Tharaud brothers respectively, consider the commune primarily in terms of its effects upon, and consequences for, individuals and families at the time. Georges Darien's savage denunciation of the bourgeois order - an indictment in which the Paris Commune serves an essential purpose - is considered in chapter Three. The fourth chapter (centred upon la colonne by Lucien Descaves) entails discussion of the commune's repudiation - through the toppling of the vendome column - of warmongering and chauvinism. In Philemon vieux de la vieille, the Commune is seen essentially in terms of its continued significance for former communards looking back, during the early l900's, to the seventy-two days' and the years of exile. Jean Cassou's characterisation of leading participants in the Commune notably Louis Rossel, Louise Michel and Jaroslaw Dombrowski - provides the principal focus for discussion in chapter six. Sources used by both Descaves and Cassou are considered in the relevant chapters. To complement material in Chapters One to Six, appendices relating to three texts (Un Communard by Leon Deffoux; le Mur by Maurice Montegut; la commune by Paul and Victor Margueritte) are included. Throughout the thesis, references are frequently made to, and comparisons drawn with, other writers who have portrayed the commune: notably Emile Zola, Leon Cladel and Jules Valles.</p>

The Paris Commune of 1871 in Selected Texts of French Prose Fiction

<p>The thesis consists essentially of a consideration of the Paris Commune of 1871 as represented in the following texts: l'Apprentie by Gustave Geffroy; l'Ami de l'Ordre by Jerome and Jean Tharaud; Bas les Coeurs and l'Epaulette by Georges Darien; la Colonne and Philemon vieux de la vieille by Lucien Descaves; les Massacres de Paris by Jean Cassou. With two exceptions (Bas les Coeurs (1889) and les Massacres de Paris (1935)) these works appeared during the opening fifteen years of the twentieth century. In addition to its obvious function of introducing the principal authors discussed, the Introduction provides background information to (and attempts to set the tone for) material examined in the main body of the thesis. Chapters one and Two, devoted to Gustave Geffroy and the Tharaud brothers respectively, consider the commune primarily in terms of its effects upon, and consequences for, individuals and families at the time. Georges Darien's savage denunciation of the bourgeois order - an indictment in which the Paris Commune serves an essential purpose - is considered in chapter Three. The fourth chapter (centred upon la colonne by Lucien Descaves) entails discussion of the commune's repudiation - through the toppling of the vendome column - of warmongering and chauvinism. In Philemon vieux de la vieille, the Commune is seen essentially in terms of its continued significance for former communards looking back, during the early l900's, to the seventy-two days' and the years of exile. Jean Cassou's characterisation of leading participants in the Commune notably Louis Rossel, Louise Michel and Jaroslaw Dombrowski - provides the principal focus for discussion in chapter six. Sources used by both Descaves and Cassou are considered in the relevant chapters. To complement material in Chapters One to Six, appendices relating to three texts (Un Communard by Leon Deffoux; le Mur by Maurice Montegut; la commune by Paul and Victor Margueritte) are included. Throughout the thesis, references are frequently made to, and comparisons drawn with, other writers who have portrayed the commune: notably Emile Zola, Leon Cladel and Jules Valles.</p>

Jules Vallès’s L’Insurgé and the Narrative of Popular Revolt

In this article, I look at Jules Vallès’s L’Insurgé to argue that its narrative style performs the politics of anonymity at the heart of the Paris Commune. To do this, I analyse three key elements of the novel – its autofictionality, its fragmentation and its ubiquitous present tense. By rejecting the exemplarity inherent in autobiography, this autofiction avant la lettre implies that the I of the narrator Jacques Vingtras, himself a stand-in for the author Jules Vallès, can be substituted with any other I. In the ‘révolution anonyme’ of 1871, there can be no leader; in its narrative, the central character is replaceable. The fragmentary writing further resists the unity of nineteenth-century novels to draw portraits of various actors of revolt; centralised revolution is abandoned in favour of communal politics. Finally, the narration in the present tense creates a sense of immediacy which rejects the glorification of the revolutionary past, and instead underscores the Paris Commune’s new politics in the making. The novel is thus enacting the ‘grande fédération des douleurs’ to which it is dedicated.

From the Ballot to the Barricade in the Paris Commune

This chapter analyzes socialist aspirations for social regeneration as they evolved from the 1840s to the Commune. It contrasts the political culture of the 1840s with that of the Commune to bring into view a conceptual mutation: where socialists had once pursued social regeneration through pacific methods and universal manhood suffrage, by 1871, they linked social regeneration with republican militarism and the reincarnation of “the people in arms.” This mutation is excavated through writers such as Louise Michel, Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, and Jules Vallès. Although this mutation was contingent, once realized, it bonded socialist dreams of regeneration to popular redemptive violence.

Music Hall, Jigs and Strippers: English Low-Brow Music in French Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing

It is a commonplace to remark that nineteenth-century England was a land without music. Yet French travel writers in the fin de siècle remark again and again on their astonishing, low-brow musical encounters in the nation’s capital. The present article examines such experiences in the writing of Jules Vallès and Hector France, as they turn their steps away from the refinement of Covent Garden to seek out more esoteric musical experiences in the music halls, tawdry bars, minor theatres and strip joints of London. These texts present an intriguing and ambivalent textual form to the reader. Though being based on – and structured as – travel anecdotes, they no less insistently reach beyond the anecdotal experience to extrapolate overarching conclusions about the English and their character relative to France. Yet in doing so, their texts reveal inconsistencies and contradictions as they try to reconcile these strange musical experiences with the stereotypes of Englishness that had solidified over the generations; these alien musical experiences resist conceptualization and challenge the tropes that had for so long underwritten French ideas of the English Other.