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The Spectacular Past : Popular History and the Novel in Nineteenth-Century France / Maurice Samuels.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]Copyright date: ©2004Description: 1 online resource (296 p.) : 14 halftonesContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781501729836
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 843/.709358 22
LOC classification:
  • PQ653 .S23 2004
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- One. Showing the Past -- Two. Spectacular Histories -- Three. Napoleon Takes the Stage -- Four. Scott Comes to France -- Five. Balzac's Spectacular Revolution -- Six. Stendhal's Historical Role -- Conclusion -- Appendix -- Index
Summary: Struggling to make sense of the Revolution of 1789, the French in the nineteenth century increasingly turned to visual forms of historical representation in a variety of media. Maurice Samuels shows how new kinds of popular entertainment introduced during and after the Revolution transformed the past into a spectacle. The wax display (in which visitors circulated amid life-size statues of historical figures), the phantasmagoria show (in which images of historical personages were projected onto smoke or invisible screens), and the panorama (in which spectators viewed giant circular canvases depicting historical scenes) employed new optical technologies to entice crowds of spectators. Such entertainments, Samuels asserts, provided bourgeois audiences with an illusion of mastery over the past, allowing them to picture their new role as historical agents.Samuels demonstrates how the spectacular mode of historical representation pervaded historiography, drama, and the novel during the Romantic period. He then argues that the early Realist fiction of Balzac and Stendhal emerged as a critique of the spectacular historical imagination. By investigating how postrevolutionary France envisioned the past, Samuels illuminates a vital moment in the cultural history of modernity.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781501729836

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- One. Showing the Past -- Two. Spectacular Histories -- Three. Napoleon Takes the Stage -- Four. Scott Comes to France -- Five. Balzac's Spectacular Revolution -- Six. Stendhal's Historical Role -- Conclusion -- Appendix -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Struggling to make sense of the Revolution of 1789, the French in the nineteenth century increasingly turned to visual forms of historical representation in a variety of media. Maurice Samuels shows how new kinds of popular entertainment introduced during and after the Revolution transformed the past into a spectacle. The wax display (in which visitors circulated amid life-size statues of historical figures), the phantasmagoria show (in which images of historical personages were projected onto smoke or invisible screens), and the panorama (in which spectators viewed giant circular canvases depicting historical scenes) employed new optical technologies to entice crowds of spectators. Such entertainments, Samuels asserts, provided bourgeois audiences with an illusion of mastery over the past, allowing them to picture their new role as historical agents.Samuels demonstrates how the spectacular mode of historical representation pervaded historiography, drama, and the novel during the Romantic period. He then argues that the early Realist fiction of Balzac and Stendhal emerged as a critique of the spectacular historical imagination. By investigating how postrevolutionary France envisioned the past, Samuels illuminates a vital moment in the cultural history of modernity.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Apr 2024)