Abstract
AbstractThis article examines the urban fiction of Jeanne Marniâs 1898 Fiacres, a collection of twenty-five stories that first appeared in the daily newspaper Le Temps. The stories are presented in the form of dialogues transcribed by an invisible spectator from within the horse drawn carriages for hire, the fiacres, the fin de siĂšcle taxi cabs. Training her eye on and lending her ear to Belle Ăpoque Paris, Marni registers the conversations of Parisians as they move about the city. In these feminocentric, and by turns humorous or ironic texts, Marni hones an âurban comicâ that merges two nineteenth-century figures: the âinvisibleâ flĂąneuse and the âinaudibleâ rieuse, or funny woman. Focusing on the intersection of the representation of urban experience and the humorous in Fiacres, this article situates Marniâs sound bites within a genealogy of women writers and the city that looks back to Delphine Gay de Girardinâs witty chronicles of July Monarchy Paris, the âCourrier de Parisâ (1836â1848), and ahead to Annie Ernauxâs ironic journal of urban selfhood in transit, Journal du dehors (1993).
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