The Depiction and Description of the Female Body in Nineteenth-century French Art, Literature and Society - Women in the Parks of Paris, 1848-1900 (Hardcover)

This book is a departure from existing art, cultural-material and literary histories of nineteenth-century Paris due to its focus on women in the public space. It concentrates on the wider issues surrounding the representation of urban space in the nineteenth century and the modes of perception which it presupposes. These modes include the commodification of women, the model of exchange governing social relations and the ritual value of public space. This book is a study of nineteenth-century Paris, its art, culture and the history of gender and urban space. Sinead Furlong Clancy brings her eye for aesthetic and historical analysis to bear on a vast array of material, from well-known paintings to contemporary literature depicting the city's changing structure and socialising aspects. At the core of the book are the details: the author consistently focusses on revealing elements, whether in her handling of aesthetic analysis, or in her readings of contemporary fashion journals, travel guides, medical and moral treatises and manuals, in order to create a vital sense of nineteenth-century material culture. These latter categories bear witness to much original research and provide a wealth of examples from sources little exploited hitherto. By invoking the feminist theories of Julia Kristeva and Helene Cixous, as well as the cultural theory of Michel Foucault, Sinead Furlong Clancy aims to identify the ways in which the representation of women in public parks may have expressed and replicated the fantasies of bourgeois society, but also provided a challenge and alternative to it from within.