Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Victims of the Book: Reading and Masculinity in Fin-De-Siècle France

Victims of the Book: Reading and Masculinity in Fin-De-Siècle France

Proulx, Francois

Hardcover

Series: University of Toronto Romance

Literary CriticismGeneral Gender Studies

ISBN10: 1487505477
ISBN13: 9781487505479
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: Nov 8 2019
Pages: 408
Weight: 1.05
Height: 1.50 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.10
Language: English

Victims of the Book uncovers a long-neglected but once widespread subgenre: the fin-de-siècle novel of formation in France. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, social commentators insistently characterized excessive reading as an emasculating illness that afflicted French youth. Novels about and geared toward adolescent male readers were imbued with a deep worry over young Frenchmen's masculinity, as evidenced by titles like Crise de jeunesse (Youth in Crisis, 1897), La Crise virile (Crisis of Virility, 1898), La Vie stérile (A Sterile Life, 1892), and La Mortelle Impuissance (Deadly Impotence, 1903). In this book, François Proulx examines a wide panorama of these novels, as well as polemical essays, pedagogical articles, and medical treatises on the perceived threats posed by young Frenchmen's reading habits.

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