Broken Glass, Broken World: Glass in French Culture in the Aftermath of 1870

165 Pages·2016·3.489 MB·English

by  Hannah Scott

Broken Glass, Broken World
Glass in French Culture in the Aftermath of 1870
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RESEARCH MOnOGRAPHS In
FREnCH STUdIES
The Research Monographs in French Studies (rmfs) form a separate series within the
Legenda programme and are published in association with the Society for French
Studies. Individual members of the Society are entitled to purchase all rmfs titles
at a discount.
The series seeks to publish the best new work in all areas of the literature, thought,
theory, culture, film and language of the French-speaking world. Its distinctiveness
lies in the relative brevity of its publications (50,000–60,000 words). As innovation
is a priority of the series, volumes should predominantly consist of new material,
although, subject to appropriate modification, previously published research may
form up to one third of the whole. Proposals may include critical editions as
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Editorial Committee
diana Knight, University of nottingham (General Editor)
Bill Burgwinkle, King’s College, Cambridge
Janice Carruthers, Queen’s University Belfast
Shirley Jordan, Queen Mary, University of London
neil Kenny, All Souls College, Oxford
Jennifer Yee, Christ Church, Oxford

Advisory Committee
Wendy Ayres-Bennett, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge
Celia Britton, University College London
Ann Jefferson, new College, Oxford
Sarah Kay, new York University
Michael Moriarty, University of Cambridge
Keith Reader, University of Glasgow
PUBLISHEd In THIS SERIES
20. Selfless Cinema? Ethics and French Documentary by Sarah Cooper
21. Poisoned Words: Slander and Satire in Early Modern France by Emily Butterworth
22. France/China: Intercultural Imaginings by Alex Hughes
23. Biography in Early Modern France 1540–1630 by Katherine Macdonald
24. Balzac and the Model of Painting by diana Knight
25. Exotic Subversions in Nineteenth-Century French Literature by Jennifer Yee
26. The Syllables of Time: Proust and the History of Reading by Teresa Whitington
27. Personal Effects: Reading the ‘Journal’ of Marie Bashkirtseff by Sonia Wilson
28. The Choreography of Modernism in France by Julie Townsend
29. Voices and Veils by Anna Kemp
30. Syntactic Borrowing in Contemporary French: A Linguistic Analysis of
News Translation by Mairi McLaughlin
31. Dreams of Lovers and Lies of Poets:
Poetry, Knowledge, and Desire in the ‘Roman de la Rose’ by Sylvia Huot
32. Maryse Condé and the Space of Literature by Eva Sansavior
33. The Livres-Souvenirs of Colette: Genre and the Telling of Time by Anne Freadman
34. Furetière’s Roman bourgeois and the Problem of Exchange by Craig Moyes
35. The Subversive Poetics of Alfred Jarry: Ubusing Culture in the Almanachs du Père Ubu
by Marieke dubbelboer
36. Echo’s Voice: The Theatres of Sarraute, Duras, Cixous and Renaude, by Mary noonan
37. Stendhal’s Less-Loved Heroines: Fiction, Freedom, and the Female, by Maria C. Scott
38. Marie NDiaye: Inhospitable Fictions, by Shirley Jordan
39. Dada as Text, Thought and Theory, by Stephen Forcer
40. Variation and Change in French Morphosyntax, by Anna Tristram
41. Postcolonial Criticism and Representations of African Dictatorship, by Cécile Bishop
42. Regarding Manneken Pis: Culture, Celebration and Conflict in Brussels,
by Catherine Emerson
43. The French Art Novel 1900–1930, by Katherine Shingler
44. Accent, Rhythm and Meaning in French Verse, by Roger Pensom
45. Baudelaire and Photography: Finding the Painter of Modern Life, by Timothy Raser
46. Broken Glass, Broken World: Glass in French Culture in the Aftermath of 1870,
by Hannah Scott
47. Southern Regional French: A Linguistic Analysis of Language and Dialect Contact,
by damien Mooney
48. Pascal Quignard: Towards the Vanishing Point, by Léa Vuong
49. France, Algeria and the Moving Image: Screening Histories of Violence 1963–2010,
by Maria Flood
50. Genet’s Genres of Politics, by Mairéad Hanrahan
51. Jean-François Vilar: Theatres Of Crime, by Margaret Atack
52. Balzac’s Love Letters: Correspondence and the Literary Imagination, by Ewa Szypula
www.legendabooks.com
Broken Glass, Broken World
Glass in French Culture
in the Aftermath of 1870
❖
Hannah Scott
Research Monographs in French Studies 46
Modern Humanities Research Association
2016
Published by Legenda
an imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association
Salisbury House, Station Road, Cambridge cb1 2la
ISBN 978-1-909662-87-2 (HB)
ISBN 978-1-781883-18-1 (PB)
First published 2016
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Contents
❖
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations and Translations x
Introduction: Why Glass? 1
1 Glass and Culture in the Aftermath of the Année Terrible 13
2 Shopping for Harmony: Glass, Sound, and the Exhibition Effect in
Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames 47
3 Breakdowns and Breaking Glass: Glass and Identity Crises in
Maupassant’s Short Stories 79
4 The Ideal naturalist? Glass, Popular Culture, and naturalism in
Huysmans’s À rebours 107
Afterword 135
Bibliography 141
Index 149
In loving memory of my wonderful grandmother
Audrey Churchward
10 April 1923 – 24 May 2015
ACknowledgements
❖
A number of people have offered me their support during this project, and I
am grateful for this opportunity to thank them. Above all, I am indebted to
Susan Harrow, who has been a constant source of guidance, encouragement, and
inspiration over the last five years. My thanks also go to diana Knight, Fiona Cox,
Robert Villain, and nicholas White, who have all generously offered their time,
advice, and criticism at various stages in the development of this book.
In Chapters 2 and 3, I draw in part on material from articles which first appeared
as ‘Symphonic Shopping: From Masculine Visuality to Feminine Aurality in Zola’s
Au Bonheur des Dames’, Dix-Neuf, 18:3 (november 2014), pp. 259–71, and ‘Le
Blanc et le noir: The Spectre Behind the Spectrum in Maupassant’s Short Stories’,
Nottingham French Studies, 52:3 (november 2013), pp. 268–80, by kind permission
of the editors.
Writing this book would not have been possible without the generous financial
support of the University of Bristol Postgraduate Studentship. I would also like to
thank the Ecole normale Supérieure in Paris, who welcomed me to the Rue d’Ulm
during my archival research.
h.s., Cambridge, February 2016