Adopts a varied approach to the study of the "material world" in the French literature, thought and visual arts of the 19th century. The book moves from purely philosphical definitions to a more general treatment of materialism, examining the repercussions of the emergence of a consumer society.

This volume adopts a varied approach to the study of the "material world" in the French literature, thought and visual arts of the 19th century. Beginning with more purely philosphical definitions of materialism, seen as a topic within the history of ideas, it moves to a broader, more general treatment of materialism - and examines the political, social and cultural repercussions of the emergence of this consumer society. In particular, the book tackles the question of how things, objects and the material surface of the world - for so long disdained and excluded by a deeply entrenched Neo-classical cultural tradition - came to be fully incorporated into the literature and visual arts of the period. Contributors look not only at the Romantic and Realist transcendence of the Neo-classical heritage of abstraction and idealism, but also adopt modern critical perspectives to analyze central themes such as urbanization, fetishism and the representation of the female body. By the author of "Popular Culture in Modern France: A Study of Cultural Discourse" and co-editor (with N. Hewitt) of "France and the Mass Media".

List of Illustrations - Preface - Notes on the Contributors - A Tribute to Donald Geoffrey Charlton and a Bibliography of his Writings
C.W.Thompson - Romanticism and the Material World: Mind, Nature and Analogy
C.Crossley - Materialism in Nineteenth-Century France
M.Kelly - Managing Democratic Change: the Politics of Materialism in the Work of Alexis de Tocqueville
D.Hanley - Producing, Retailing, Consuming: France 1830-70
R.Magraw - Things, Distinction and Decay in Nineteenth-Century French Literature
B.Rigby - From Neo-Classical to Romantic Aesthetics: The Status of the Material World in Nineteenth-Century French Drama
W.D.Howarth - Towards the Materiality of the Sign: Aesthetics and Poetics in Nineteenth-Century France
D.Scott - No Object too Humble? Still Life Painting in French Art Criticism during the Second Empire
J.Kearns - Unstable Objects: acropole and barbarie in Rimbaud's Villes I
M.Treharne - Immaterial Views? Science, Intransigence and the Female Spectator of Modern French Art in 1879
A.Callen - Object Choices: Taste and Fetichism in Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale
D.Knight - Bibliography - Index