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Author:

Sasson, Sarah.

Title:

Longing to belong : the parvenu in nineteenth-century French and German literature / Sarah Juliette Sasson.

Edition:

1st ed.

Publisher:

Palgrave Macmillan,

Copyright Date:

2012

Description:

xii, 210 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.

Subject:

French literature--19th century--History and criticism.
German literature--19th century--History and criticism.
Social classes in literature.
Marginality, Social, in literature.
Literature and society--France--History--19th century.
Literature and society--Germany--History--19th century.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [191]-202) and index.

Contents:

Theory of the parvenu -- Sartorial stories : at the fringes of the social sphere -- The poetics of identity -- The fiction of accomplishment -- Topography of conquest -- A strange bestiary : alterity and the question of humanity.

Summary:

"Rising from humble origins to a position of preeminence, galvanized by the possibilities for financial gains made possible by the age of capital, multitudes of social climbers appeared, on the make, bent on conquering society's upper reaches by whatever means available. Yet making it is not the same as fitting in: an emblematic figure of the bourgeois century, the parvenu represents the Other on which a society depends. This drama of exclusion is symptomatic of nineteenth-century society as a whole. ambivalent about social mobility and the meaning of social advancement, oscillating between a new sense of opportunity for all and a backward-looking retrenchment to rigid social structures. The parvenu allows us to decipher a culture and its prejudices, its fears and its difficulty in negotiating the advent of modernity"--Provided by publisher.

Series:

Nineteenth century major lives and letters

ISBN:

1137278218 (hardback)
9781137278210 (hardback)

OCLC:

(OCoLC)793573217

LCCN:

2012022502

Locations:

OVUX522 -- University of Iowa Libraries (Iowa City)