Work and leisure in late nineteenth-century French literature and visual culture : time, politics and class / Claire White.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

White, Claire, 1985-

Series:

Palgrave studies in modern European literature

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French literature--19th century--History and criticism.

French literature.

Work in literature.

Leisure in literature.

Work in art.

Leisure in art.

Physical Description:

xiv, 246 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Summary:

The language of labour and leisure politics was burned onto the social consciousness in France by the Revolution, and it would remain critical to the ideals and conflicts at stake in future moments of upheaval. In the years following the Paris Commune, the mobilisation of the workforce and the struggle for labour reforms brought centre stage questions about time, politics and individual and collective rights. Claire White's account brings late nineteenth-century literature and art into conjunction with political discourses, philosophy and the social sciences to reveal how representations of work and leisure became the vehicle for class anxieties and utopian fantasies. More than topics of cultural history, this study shows how the terms and politics of labour and leisure were fundamental to artistic self-conceptions, affecting the ways in which writers and artists understood their own cultural work. Moving between fiction, poetry and painting, this study refocuses works by the canonical writers Émile Zola and Jules Laforgue, and the long-overlooked Neo-Impressionist painter Maximilien Luce. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Workers at Play in Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart 43

2 Dominical Diversions: Laforgue on Sundays 77

3 Beyond the Leisure Principle: Luce and Neo-Impressionism 117

4 Work and Pleasure: Zola's Travail 156.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-237) and index.

ISBN:

9781137373069

1137373067

OCLC:

870285663

Publisher Number:

99959302082