The Colonial Comedy : Imperialism in the French Realist Novel by Jennifer Yee FB2 read online ebook
9780198722632 English 019872263X Although the connections between colonialism and British nineteenth-century literature have been well studied, there have been few sustained, book-length attempts to map out the role of colonial experience in French realist novels of the century. The Colonial Comedy offers a broad view of the subject, but one that is carefully grounded in close reading and informed by consultation of authors' manuscripts. Linking materialist cultural analysis to thespecific traits of the realist novel, it exposes the importance of imported objects, financial networks and the new urban working classes in fiction's response to early global capitalism. Bridging the gap betweenPostcolonial theory and nineteenth-century literary studies, Ihe Colonial Comedy renews our vision of key authors of realist canon (Balzac, Flaubert, Zola and Maupassant). It makes an original contribution to theoretical debates on literary realism, including recent arguments within postcolonial theory concerning 'Peripheral Realisms'. Situating the nineteenth-century canon in terms of postcolonial debates, it responds to Edward Said and more recent views of world-literature as partof the emerging world-system., Nineteenth-century French Realism focuses on metropolitan France, with Paris as its undisputed heart. Through Jennifer Yee's close reading of the great novelists of the French realist and naturalist canon - Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant - The Colonial Comedy reveals that the colonies playa role at a distance even in the most apparently metropolitan texts. In what Edward Said called "geographical notations" of race and imperialism the presence of the colonies off-stage is apparent as imported objects, colonial merchandise, and individuals whose colonial experience is transformative.Indeed, the realist novel registers the presence of the emerging global world-system through networks of importation, financial speculation, and immigration as well as direct colonial violence and power structures. The literature of the century responds to the last decades of French slavery, and direct colonialism (notably in Algeria), but also economic imperialism and the extension of French influence elsewhere. Far from imperialist triumphalism, in the realist novel exotic objects are portrayed as fake ormass-produced for the growing bourgeois market, while economic imperialism is associated with fraud and manipulation. The deliberate contrast of colonialism and exoticism within the metropolitan novel, and ironic distancing of colonial narratives, reveal the realist mode to be capable of questioningits own epistemological basis. The Colonial Comedy argues for the existence in the nineteenth century of a Critical Orientalism characterized by critique of its own discursive foundations.Using the tools of literary analysis within a materialist approach, The Colonial Comedy opens up the domestic Paris-Provinces axis to signifying chains pointing towards the colonial space.
9780198722632 English 019872263X Although the connections between colonialism and British nineteenth-century literature have been well studied, there have been few sustained, book-length attempts to map out the role of colonial experience in French realist novels of the century. The Colonial Comedy offers a broad view of the subject, but one that is carefully grounded in close reading and informed by consultation of authors' manuscripts. Linking materialist cultural analysis to thespecific traits of the realist novel, it exposes the importance of imported objects, financial networks and the new urban working classes in fiction's response to early global capitalism. Bridging the gap betweenPostcolonial theory and nineteenth-century literary studies, Ihe Colonial Comedy renews our vision of key authors of realist canon (Balzac, Flaubert, Zola and Maupassant). It makes an original contribution to theoretical debates on literary realism, including recent arguments within postcolonial theory concerning 'Peripheral Realisms'. Situating the nineteenth-century canon in terms of postcolonial debates, it responds to Edward Said and more recent views of world-literature as partof the emerging world-system., Nineteenth-century French Realism focuses on metropolitan France, with Paris as its undisputed heart. Through Jennifer Yee's close reading of the great novelists of the French realist and naturalist canon - Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant - The Colonial Comedy reveals that the colonies playa role at a distance even in the most apparently metropolitan texts. In what Edward Said called "geographical notations" of race and imperialism the presence of the colonies off-stage is apparent as imported objects, colonial merchandise, and individuals whose colonial experience is transformative.Indeed, the realist novel registers the presence of the emerging global world-system through networks of importation, financial speculation, and immigration as well as direct colonial violence and power structures. The literature of the century responds to the last decades of French slavery, and direct colonialism (notably in Algeria), but also economic imperialism and the extension of French influence elsewhere. Far from imperialist triumphalism, in the realist novel exotic objects are portrayed as fake ormass-produced for the growing bourgeois market, while economic imperialism is associated with fraud and manipulation. The deliberate contrast of colonialism and exoticism within the metropolitan novel, and ironic distancing of colonial narratives, reveal the realist mode to be capable of questioningits own epistemological basis. The Colonial Comedy argues for the existence in the nineteenth century of a Critical Orientalism characterized by critique of its own discursive foundations.Using the tools of literary analysis within a materialist approach, The Colonial Comedy opens up the domestic Paris-Provinces axis to signifying chains pointing towards the colonial space.