Belle Epoque Research Articles

French cycling: a social and cultural history

Acknowledgements 1. French Cycling: Issues and Themes 2. The Early Years: Cycling in Search of an Identity, 1869-1891 3. Towards Sporting Modernity: Sport as the Driver of Cycling, 1891-1902 4. The Belle Epoque and the First World War: Industry, Sport, Utility and Leisure, 1903-1918 5. Cycling between the Wars: Sport, Recreation, Ideology, 1919-1939 6. From Defeat to the New France: Sport and Society, Cycling, and Everyday Life, 1940-1959 7. Cycling's Glory Years and their Mediatization, 1960-1980 8. Cycling in Transformation: Industry, Recreation, Sport, 1980-2000 9. French Cycling in Quest of a New Identity, 2000-2011 10. A Sense of Cycling in France Bibliography Index

Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and their Friends

This book explores the private and public lives of well-known artists, composers, architects, poets, novelists, sculptors, playwrights, actresses, dancers, entrepreneurs, and politicians in the last third of the nineteenth century. McAuliffe’s deep research in both primary and secondary sources, combined with her skilled reconstruction of social and professional networks, results in a wealth of fascinating, roughly interwoven biographies and historical events. The reader is treated, for example, to such diverse morsels as the vision of Claude Debussy climbing a rope ladder to the bedroom of his close friend’s wife while he was a guest in the couple’s summer home, and the phenomenal contributions Gustave Eiffel made to the success of French aircraft and radio communications during World War I. Professional historians of France and of French culture, arts, and literature will wonder what contribution this book—intended for a general audience and devoid of any explicit argument—makes to our scholarly understanding of the belle époque. Its examples demonstrate how individuals negotiated their way through this period of crumbling tradition and extraordinary innovation in the midst of major economic and political upheavals. McAuliffe unearths both the mundane and sublime encounters with change, from Emile Zola’s and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s bicycle-induced broken arms and their proclaimed distaste for mechanised speed, and the prolonged controversies over the building of the Sacré Coeur basilica and its symbolic counterpoint, the Statue of Liberty, to the electrical and mechanised wonders of the 1889 and 1900 Paris Expositions. Much of the narrative focuses on her subjects’ initial failures and subsequent successes, and on their uses and abuses of extra-marital affairs and social-professional networks as they climbed upwards or, in several cases, fell into states of degeneration.

American Architecture Students in Belle Epoque Paris: Scholastic Strategies and Achievements at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts

The Gilded Age and Progressive Era witnessed the largest influx of American architecture students to the Paris Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The U.S. contingent—120 students admitted in the 1890s, 154 in the 1900s—accounted for 10 to nearly 20 percent of incoming students each year. This illustrated essay uses projects prepared by these students to introduce the major features and principles of the Ecole's architecture curriculum, in particular the physical and instructional framework of the atelier and the medium of the concours. The essay presents a step-by-step selection of projects by American students admitted between 1890 and 1909. These range from a twelve-hour sketch problem required for the admission competition to a diplôme (masters' thesis). Beyond introducing the Beaux-Arts method of instruction, these prints provide insight into the subsequent American career of their authors and thus of American architecture and urban design overall, given the enormous influence exerted by the Ecole des Beaux Arts and its anciens élèves. Drawings requested from Ecole students were not just artfully composed and brilliantly rendered pictures. They were problem-solving endeavors. Former students preserved them not only as study models, but also as status symbols, even trophies.

Justice, Inequality, and the Market: Soviet Sociology in the Transition to Capitalism

This essay examines the role played by Soviet sociology in the USSR’s transition to capitalism. It analyzes the discipline’s contribution to the critique of Soviet socio-economic life during the 1980s, identifying the emergence of two divergent viewpoints within Soviet sociology over the relationship between inequality, the market, and the goals of a socialist society. The essay explores how these viewpoints intersected with the implementation of economic reforms by the Gorbachev regime, arguing that the dominant forces within Soviet sociology ultimately helped the party-state bureaucracy craft the legitimizing ideology of perestroika by insisting that growing social inequality and market-based mechanisms of distribution were the very embodiment of socialism. After enduring a politically fraught and semi-pariah existence for much of its history, Soviet sociology enjoyed a belle epoque as it helped the ruling elite navigate the transition to capitalism.

Die Transzendenz der Gewalt im Angesicht der Wende – Thomas Hettches Nox und die besondere Konstellation der Postmoderne

The year 1989 not only marks the end of the Cold War and the German reunification, it also initiates a specific period in which post-modern philosophy reached its peak. The political and social situation in the Occident seemed to be so stable that scientists as well as the general public started to speak of the “end of history”. This was accompanied by a certain feeling of loss of reality, intensified by the development of electronic media. This little Belle Epoque of the 90s was the breeding ground for a peculiar understanding of violence that was expressed in popular culture or even in such phenomena as extreme sports. The violence was in fact seen as one of the few ways to transcend the boundaries of the world not only broadcasted but also created by the mass media. With the spirit of the times corresponds the novel Nox by Thomas Hettche. The text, considered as one of the first novels of German Reunification, brings up and connects two transitions – the one, regional, from the divided to the reunified Germany and the other, related to all spheres of reality, from modernity to post-modernity. In both processes, the infamous, autotelic violence emerges (Reemtsma), this time, in the constellation of postmodernity, under the guise of transcendence.

Nietzsche belle époque: decadência e performatividade

A apropriação de Nietzsche em torno do termo décadence - e seus conexos - nos textos redigidos entre 1887 e 1888 pode nos mostrar não apenas seu interesse de por um léxico típico da literatura e da fisiologia da belle époque, mas o modo como o uso desse vocabulário lhe permitiu, ao mesmo tempo, se colocar diante de seu tempo e estabelecer novas estratégias de escrita. Partindo, portanto, do horizonte decadentista e de seus procedimentos narrativos, entre 1871 e 1914, o artigo pretende analisar os tensionamentos envolvidos na inscrição de Nietzsche no período que se estende de seus últimos escritos até sua primeira recepção.

Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and their Friends

Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and their Friends

‘We’ is for Anarchism: Construction and Use of Collective Identity in the Anarchist Press of Fin-de-siècle Switzerland

CONTEXTLooking at the history of organized anarchism and of anarchist theorists, many a connection with Switzerland is revealed. The anti-authoritarian International Worker's Association (I.W.A.) was inaugurated 1872 in St. Inner and I.W.A. congresses took place in Geneva and Basel. Renowned theorists such as Michail Bakunin, Elisee Reclus, Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, Paul Brousse or John Most stayed and campaigned for a number of years from within the small republic in central Europe. While anarchism proved to have an affinity for Switzerland due to its relatively high tolerance of anarchist newspapers, congresses, schools and gatherings at the end of the 19th century, the love was not exactly returned, to put it mildly. Swiss press with bourgeois, conservative and/or social-democratic agendas denoted anarchism repeatedly as a plague and its adherents as pests, vermin, traitors or psychopaths.2The public opinion has been echoed and met by statist practices. From the 1 840s onward, both the official and public discourses remained, by and large, hostile towards anarchism and anarchists alike.3 While anarchist manifestations turned into brawls with the general public4 from time to time, officials supported and nurtured the hostile public opinion with a variety of means, ranging from expulsions5 to the introduction of Anarchist Acts6 through to the sharpening of the so-called guillotine seche (dry guillotine) by passing on sensitive data from the political police to employers.7 Nonetheless, Switzerland remained (...) one of the most important European locations for anarchists in exile.8Newspapers at the time were a busy industry in Switzerland. As late as 1939, there are notions of Switzerland being the country with the highest number of published titles among all countries9 Whereas in 2007 merely 20510 titles were on sale, in 1896 there were 33811 titles available. Anarchist newspapers did not make an exception to that rule and added to that wide variety. In the three decades between the beginning of the official persecution of anarchists and anarchism in early 1885 and until the First World War, no less than 23 titles in French and German have been published, as could have been revealed: Freie Gesellschaft, Junge Schweiz, Der Weckruf, Revolutionare Bibliothek, Der Vorposten, Polis, Die Vorkampferin, Der Sozialist, Arbeiter-Wille, Jahrbuch der Freien Generation, Le Revolte, L'Egalitaire, La Critique Sociale, L'Avenir, Le Reveil, L'Emancipation, Action Anarchiste, La Voix du Peuple, L'Almanach du Travailleur, L'Union Syndicale, Le Boycotteur, L'Exploitee, Bulletin de l'Ecole Ferrer}2 However, anarchist media was, much like anarchists themselves, not exactly welcomed, but rather tolerated at best. Constant repression and persecution especially for foreign, asylum-seeking anarchists was aimed not so much at singular persons but at the social movement as a whole. These de facto antianarchist practices weren't a Swiss phenomenon alone, but reflected a predominant opinion in Belle Epoque Atlantica. From 1884-1894 national legislations were introduced from France to Italy, from Germany to Austria throughout Europe. In a more international gesture, the antianarchist sentiments culminated in the Conferences Against Anarchism in Rome 1898 and St. Peterburg 1904.13WHY COLLECTIVE IDENTITY?Despite these headwinds that affected everyday life as much as travel and work, the anarchist movement persisted. As I argue, collective identity played an integral part in the prolonging. The reason for this assumption lies in the character of anarchism as a social movement. Unlike other social movements, anarchism did not try to ameliorate the status quo through reforms on principle. Political participation and the social, professional and wealth status and benefits that come with it, were diametrically opposed to the anarchist Weltanschauung. On the contrary, anarchism demanded all the more for the abolition of paid administrative offices in order to establish a federative, non-hierarchical society based on mutual aid and solidarity. …

Codici alla mano. I due figli di Iorio in contenzioso estetico-giudiziario

The nineteenth-century underworld of trans-parody – sexual reversals on a comical taste, with en travesti characters representing, for counterpoint, mythic figures of the novel and melodramatic imaginary – couldn’t be comprehended if we forget that some charismatic figures of modern individualism have already been completely evirated (from The Female Quichotte onwards). There is, also, a pioneer work in the copyright history which has been inspired by this ‘family’ of texts: Il Figlio di Iorio (1904) written by Eduardo Scarpetta, parody of La figlia di Iorio by Gabriele D’Annunzio (1904). The “commedia presepiana” – halfway from a belle epoque “opera buffa”, to a homemade parody – provoked a small juidicial ‘earthquake’: a request of consent, a caution, a legal action against plagiarism and, finally, a process based on phenomenal evidences and marked by the whole cultural-social community divided into two parts: scholars vs players, crying vs smiling, high culture vs plebeian culture, etc. – and some prestigious scholars that attended as assessors. Very interesting case of Sociology of Art, the D’Annunzio-Scarpetta process is also a crucial episode in the history of culture: during the process it took place an amateurish and heated brainstorming of “Forensic Comparativism”.

LA ACUARELA Y EL ARQUITECTO. Tres acuarelas de José María Manuel Cortina. Valencia 1868-1950

This paper describes and analyzes three watercolors by the Valencian architect Manuel Cortina (1868-1950) titled Iglesia Parroquial (Parish Church) Casa de Recreo en una posesion de caza. (Country house in a private hunting preserve) and Fuente Monumental. (Monumental Fountain), focusing on the influence of C. N. Ledoux, O. Wagner and E. E. Viollet-le-Duc’s drawings on Cortina’s paintings. The paper also describes this transparent and distant painting method as emblematic of a period, the Belle Epoque, and a movement, the Vienna Sezession of the late 19th century, and its photographic, cinematographic and oneiric imagery.

Voice Lessons: French Mélodie in the Belle Epoque (review)

Voice Lessons: French Mélodie in the Belle Epoque (review)

"The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful": Reflections on a Hidden Motif in Literature

In the 19th century, women’s undergarments certainly remained an instrument of powerful strategies for alienating women, in particular through the coercion of bodies by the imposition of the corset. It is nonetheless possible to perceive in the late 19th century and the Belle Epoque a hidden motif apparent in the use of feminine lingerie, as shown by recent scientific research and by an informed reinterpretation of literary works of the period. Such is the growing reflection upon an object that crystallizes often contradictory points of view. For in this object, the beauty of lacework or ribbons can signify all at once good or evil, wonder or pain, and it could throw light, a century later, on social situations that create an unexpected discourse on love, sex and equality.

Mothers of Invention: Fictional Alternatives to Procreation

French feminists are sometimes perceived as making slower progress than their European sisters because suffrage was not achieved until well into the twentieth century, but this perception fails to take into account that for French women themselves, the vote was secondary to other, more pressing feminist issues. The right to force men to take responsibility for paternity, for example, was of far more interest in the fin-de-siècle and Belle Epoque periods. Until (and even after) this right was won in the first decade of the twentieth century, women often bore total responsibility for children, which meant that in an era of limited contraception, women ran far greater risks than men if they engaged in sexual activity that could result in conception. This article considers some of the ways women explored alternative forms of sexual expression in the Belle Epoque period, making perhaps a virtue out of necessity, and illustrates the emphasis on non-procreative sexuality through the work of novelist Rachilde (1860-1953), whose fiction enthusiastically offers a veritable catalogue of alternative sexualities.

Informal Urban Economy: A Historical Approach of Paris Street-Level Prostitution

How can districts become totally embedded in informal economy despite harsh state regulation? In this paper, we use qualitative and quantitative data to explain the increasing number of “clandestine” street prostitutes in Paris during The Belle Epoque. We first describe the economics of street prostitution at the time: street prostitutes were young, unskilled and well-paid; they tended to work with pimps that were from the same area and clustered in neighborhoods where they could compete with regulated brothels. Street prostitutes not only generated profits for themselves but also for a whole bunch of actors, thereby switching the whole local economy to this industry, at the expense of the formal economy.

O período de intenso crescimento econômico argentino de 1870 a 1930: uma discussão

A economia argentina experimentou no final do século XIX um período de intenso embora não constante crescimento, a Belle Époque, sendo que sua periodização e caracterização consistem nos principais objetivos do presente artigo. A discussão desenvolve-se a partir de uma revisão da literatura sobre crescimento econômico na Argentina. O efetivo início da Bell Époque ficou situado entre o final da década de setenta e o começo da de oitenta do século XIX. A questão do seu término girou em torno de duas datas:1914, início da Primeira Guerra Mundial —hipótese de retardação precoce; e 1929, ocasião da Grande Depressão — hipótese da retardação tardia. Como conclusão, pode-se afirmar que a economia argentina dos séculos XIX e XX não apresentou evolução linear, mas sim períodos de grande crescimento seguidos de quedas e de recuperações cada vez mais lentas, com demora crescente em recuperar os níveis previamente atingidos.

Renoir, Impressionism, and full-length painting

Magnificent full-length impressionist paintings by Renoir capture the glamorous spirit and refined milieu of Belle Epoque Paris Throughout his long working life, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) produced large-format portraits and subject pictures. From the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s-the decade of Impressionism-his vertical, grand-scale canvases were among the artist's most daring and ambitious presentations of contemporary life and fashion. Today they rank among the masterpieces of Impressionism. This stunning book offers fresh insights into Renoir's complex ambitions as a young artist, when he submitted works to both the avant-garde impressionist exhibitions and the official Salon. While painting in the new impressionist style, Renoir remained committed to the full-length format, which was eschewed by most of his fellow impressionists as too traditional. This format afforded Renoir the opportunity to devote himself to the heroic painting of everyday life, and also to linger on the finest details of his figures' fashionable costumes and accessories. Ten iconic canvases display the rich variety of this artist's painterly technique. They reveal the sheer virtuosity of his brushwork in creating silk, lace, mink, and taffeta for shimmering ball gowns, sumptuous furs, chic Parisian day dresses, and glamorous theatrical costumes. These paintings capture the faces and fashions of Renoir's Paris. Extensively illustrated, the book draws upon contemporary criticism, literature, and archival documents to explore the motivation behind Renoir's full-length figure paintings, and technical studies of the canvases shed new light on the artist's working methods.

Digital Tableaux of Cinematic Cultural Memory in the French Heritage Film: Un long dimanche de fiançailles

The French heritage film reconstitutes a vivid and unique portrait of France's history, where the corporeal impact of the sensual audio-visual cinematographic language, and its particular effects, styles and aesthetics, encourage spectators to have the sensation of experiencing a past that they have not directly lived and thereby to gain a potential cinematic cultural memory of history. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's French heritage film Un long dimanche de fiancailles combines the effects of digital cinema with heritage cinema's painterly aesthetic to create digital tableaux of the past, where a fantastic vision of history intertwines with authentic realism, alternatively offering collective audiences memories of sublime and ideal, utopian tableaux of the late Belle Epoque and early 1920s France against destructive, dystopian tableaux of World War One trench warfare on the battlefields of the Somme.

Muscles, Nerves, and Sex: The Contradictions of the Medical Approach to Female Bodies in Movement in France, 1847–1914

From the early nineteenth century in France, the treatment of hysteria was connected to both physical and moral development. As a result, therapeutic treatments envisaged by medical practitioners were influenced by and related to the formulation of precepts of medical gymnastics. This article considers how ‘physical education’ for women became part of medical discourse, specifically the elaboration of ‘body treatment’ as a remedy against nervous disorders including hysteria.From the Second Republic (1848) to the years of the belle epoque (1914), the discourse concerning the medical cause of ‘hysterical madness’ is marked by the progressive discrediting of reflections that located the causes of pathology in the genitals. However, the shaping of a neuro‐cerebral etiology did not fully replace discussions of the relationship between hysteria, female bodies and the uterus. While the current historiography emphasises the participation of doctors in the production and legitimation of physical exercises in the nineteenth century, some aspects of this process are not yet fully explored. We examine the ambivalences of medical discourse, between the rhetoric of the eternally wounded woman and the need to develop women's abilities (intellectual, moral, and physical) to ensure healthy children. And despite the shadows that still obscure the etiology of nervous disorders, there is, in our period, a genuine dynamic favouring experimental therapeutics. The ‘movement disorders’, such as chorea, hysteria or neurasthenia, were handled by increasingly well‐established regimes utilising physical exercise. The introduction of gymnastics in the hospital played a fundamental role in this process; it enabled experimentation and lent legitimacy to physical exercise as therapy.

The Belle Epoque of International Finance: French Capital Exports, 1880‐1914

This paper introduces a new dataset of French investments in foreign securities. This is the most detailed data available to date. The data is used to study the composition, valuation, and total return of the French portfolio of non‐sovereign foreign securities on the 34 years before World War I. Additional insights are obtained about the structure of the financial market in France.

Linking Socialism, Feminism, and Social Darwinism in Belle Epoque France: the maternalist politics and journalism of Aline Valette

More than any other Frenchwoman of her era, Aline Valette (1850–1899) achieved positions of leadership in both socialism and feminism. Linking her politics with evolutionary biology, Valette promoted a theory called ‘sexualism’ that promised to reorder societal priorities in favor of mothers and children. Five years before the famous all-woman daily La Fronde appeared, Valette founded L'Harmonie sociale, where she publicized the plight of women workers and promoted her political ideas. This study revises previous interpretations of Valette that have tended to dismiss both her socialism and her feminism, because she reached across class lines and ‘glorified to the extreme’ women's traditional motherly roles.