IN SEARCH OF THE CITY: POWER, IDENTITY, AND NARRATIVES OF URBANIZATION FROM STENDHAL TO ZOLA

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorBrami, Josephen_US
dc.contributor.authorWegmann, Hannahen_US
dc.contributor.departmentModern French Studiesen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2018-07-17T05:53:52Z
dc.date.available2018-07-17T05:53:52Z
dc.date.issued2018en_US
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation studies urbanization in nineteenth-century French novels, exploring the ways that this demographic phenomenon structures plot, describes inner transformations, and most importantly becomes a catalyst for confronting and challenging established power structures. Characters who transition from rural to urban states, either geographic and actual, or interior and moral, force confrontations between a whole series of power constructs embodied by the country and city. Their evolution, mapped in conjunction with demographic studies and the writings of urban theorists, allows us to explore questions of authority, reality, language, and gender in nineteenth-century France. An analysis of the concrete urbanization of Julien Sorel in Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir is followed by a study of the abstract urbanization of Emma in Flaubert's Madame Bovary, who refashions her identity and morals in line with urban ideals. Chapter three employs Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames to study the urbanization reshaping the economic power structures of Paris. Chapter four uses Zola's L'Assommoir to question the nineteenth-century idealism behind many urban reforms. Using works by Flaubert, Théophile Gautier, Pierre Loti, George Sand, Claire de Duras, and numerous visual artists, the final chapter explores the relationship between urbanization and Orientalism by transposing the rural-urban binary onto the relationship between Occident and Orient. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that actual rural and urban geographies become cartographies of power wherein the country and city communicate an entire set of forces competing for agency. Each narrative of urbanization exhibits different manifestations of the city and the country and different types of evolution between the two. Yet each narrative reveals a fundamental transformation precipitated by the clashing of rural and urban ideas, powers, and identities. This transformation shapes and defines nineteenth-century France.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/M25M6298D
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/20864
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledFrench literatureen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledArt historyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledFranceen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledNineteenth Centuryen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledOrientalismen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledParisen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledUrbanizationen_US
dc.titleIN SEARCH OF THE CITY: POWER, IDENTITY, AND NARRATIVES OF URBANIZATION FROM STENDHAL TO ZOLAen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Wegmann_umd_0117E_18842.pdf
Size:
61.11 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download

Collections

UMD Theses and Dissertations
Languages, Literatures, & Cultures Theses and Dissertations