Balzac on the Barricades: The Literary Origins of an Economic Revolution (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780813951393)

The role of nineteenth-century French literature in a distinctively modern political movement

When Parisian workers took to the streets in February 1848, they adopted the rallying cry of droit au travail (the right to work). That protesters increasingly framed employment as a political right represented a radical and modern development. But where had this idea originated? In her examination of this cause célèbre of France's Second Republic, Rebecca Powers shows that the redefinition of labor as a basic right sprang not only from political debates but also directly from contemporary literature.

Powers charts the rise of this revolutionary concept through the tales of bourgeois dominance in the novels and newspaper articles of Honoré de Balzac. As Powers explains, this realist semiotician of French provincial and urban life par excellence was the first to attempt a definition of modern labor as an integral part of the emerging modern society. Powers makes clear how recognizing Balzac's influence on mid-nineteenth-century political discourse is essential to understanding the course of events in that earth-shaking year.

Author: Rebecca Terese Powers
ISBN-10: 0813951399
ISBN-13: 9780813951393
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Language: English
Published: 07/08/2024
Pages: 240
Format: Hardcover