France on Display: Peasants, Provincials, and Folklore in the 1937 Paris World's Fair (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780791437100)

Explores national identity in twentieth-century France.

Winner of the 1999 Laurence Wylie Prize in French Cultural Studies presented by the Association for French Cultural Studies

The 1937 Paris World's Fair presented a traditionalist image of France as a rural, provincial country, faithful to its folk traditions and to its Old World heritage. France's attachment, well into the twentieth century, to its traditionalist roots has often been interpreted by scholars as a reactionary impulse, a desire to resist modernization or a wish to return to the past. However, in this book Peer argues that this enduring attachment in Third Republic France to peasants, provincials, and folklore was not inherently reactionary or anti-modernist. Instead, these aspects of France's "traditional" heritage were refashioned in new ways to allow France to modernize while still retaining its distinctive identity.