Longing to Belong: the Parvenu in Nineteenth-Century French and German Literature |
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| Author:
| Sasson, Sarah Juliette |
| Series title: | Nineteenth Century Major Lives and Letters Ser. |
| ISBN: | 978-1-283-94753-4 |
| Publication Date: | Jan 2012 |
| Publisher: | Palgrave Macmillan
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| Book Format: | Ebook |
| List Price: | USD $90.00 |
Book Description:
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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...
More DescriptionRising 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.