Popular Novels Research Articles

Railway Reading and Late-Victorian Literary Series, by Paul Raphael Rooney

Reviewed by: Railway Reading and Late-Victorian Literary Series by Paul Raphael Rooney Sara Hackenberg (bio) Railway Reading and Late-Victorian Literary Series, by Paul Raphael Rooney; pp. vii + 179. London and New York: Routledge, 2018, £85.00, $140.00. Today’s trains, buses, and airplanes contain countless people who, absorbed in their smartphones, busily ward off “alogotransiphobia,” a late-twentieth century neologism for the fear of being without reading material while in transit that Paul Raphael Rooney references in his innovative study Railway Reading and Late-Victorian Literary Series (11). Rooney argues in Railway Reading that alogotransiphobia has its roots in Victorian reading needs and practices. He examines the Victorians’ enormous appetite for entertaining reading material as they moved through space by focusing on three late-century book series that were marketed to and popular with railway travelers: Chatto & Windus’s “Cheap Editions of Popular Novels” (1877–99), Routledge’s “Detective Books” (1887–88), and “Arrowsmith’s Bristol Library” (1884–1901). [End Page 146] Rooney’s study addresses a host of fascinating questions. How did late-Victorian railway reading differ from other kinds of reading? What kinds of reading matter did Victorians who felt alogotransiphobia select, and why? What did the reading of inexpensive and entertaining material while in transit do, or produce, culturally? How centrally might specific book series and individual booksellers have shaped readers’ selections? How might books popular with railway travelers have impacted literature and literary production more broadly? That these questions remain largely open by the end of Rooney’s book is a testament both to Rooney’s ambition and to the complexity of his material. Indeed, Railway Reading provides such an enticing glimpse into late-Victorian book series aimed at railway travelers that I hope it is the beginning of a larger project analyzing the importance of railway reading to nineteenth-century readers and writers. While Rooney focuses on late-century series, his tantalizing references to mid-century material, particularly Simms & M’Intyre’s yellowback publications and the “prodigious Routledge’s Railway Library,” point to additional archives that could further illuminate the history and significances of Victorian alogotransiphobia (69). This reader would also welcome elaboration on Rooney’s intriguing observations about the particular appeal of reprinted serialized novels to readers in transit. Additionally, Rooney’s interest in transatlantic crossings (as evidenced in the Routledge detective books series he examines, which consisted entirely of reprinted American and French titles) raises questions about the intersections of British, American, and continental European railway reading. Rooney opens his study with a consideration of “Victorian Readers and Reading Post-1870,” which offers a concise summation of the largely disparaging critical and literary views of the reading matter of the lower middleclass that arose after the Forster Act of 1870 expanded access to elementary education. Noting that he wants specifically to “focus on reading for pleasure,” Rooney poses another important question (27): “if [according to these critics and representations] readers were supposedly not engaging with the reading matter that would be most beneficial, what was the particular allure of the material that did succeed in attracting their time, investment, and attentions?” (32). Rooney offers a few suggestive but tentative answers to this question, noting that such reading for pleasure could sometimes “assist . . . social climbing or self-betterment”; that it provided a way to “escape the colourlessness of the everyday”; and—most intriguingly— that it could somehow furnish “a worldview or narrative lens that will aid in deciphering . . . everyday experiences” (38). Coming on the heels of such suggestions, the chapter’s conclusion that “reading obviously could serve as a pleasurable leisure time activity, but the function of books arguably ran deeper than offering a purely recreational pursuit” feels a little disappointingly underdeveloped (44). The subsequent four chapters all trace systems that made such potentially deep but also distinctly pleasurable reading available, from the choices of W. H. Smith booksellers to curated book series. Chapter 2 observes that some of Smith’s booksellers considered their offerings for travelers “food for the mind,” as one expressed it (a phrase Rooney uses in his chapter’s title). Chapter 3 traces the ways in which the “diversity” offered by the Chatto & Windus “Cheap Editions of...

Books for Idle Hours: Nineteenth-Century Publishing and the Rise of Summer Reading

Donna Harrington-Leuker, professor of English at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, has written a detailed, thoroughly researched overview of the development of summer reading as an American phenomenon, something that most of us simply take for granted today. Utilizing a wide variety of primary documents, including publishers' records, book reviews, diaries and correspondence of readers, and the popular novels of the period themselves, she demonstrates that the concept of “summer reading” was a consequence of the rise of the middle class in the nineteenth century, with the accompanying concepts of summer travel and summer leisure. Of particular note is her consideration of the educated African American elite and the summer resort communities that catered to their needs.The work illuminates the role of nineteenth-century periodicals in marketing summer reading to vacationers and, in particular, to female vacationers, presenting it as a “genteel performance” (41) taking place in a gendered space under the gaze of marriageable males. Harrington-Leuker also reveals the cultural work of the American summer novel, exploring individual authors and titles in depth. She clearly demonstrates how the early American summer novel, set in summer resorts and “ostensibly about summer leisure … became a narrative of self and society at a transitional moment in nineteenth-century culture.” This section is perhaps the least successful, as it requires a familiarity with those authors and titles and she admits herself that most of them have passed into obscurity, Louisa May Alcott being a notable exception. Her “blood-and-thunder tales” are presented as an example of the way that “the season's saturnalian possibilities … remained a part of the public discourse of summer.” Apparently, what happened at the summer resort stayed at the summer resort.Of particular interest to library historians will be the section on the role of space and place in American Victorian summer reading, including as it does descriptions of social and solitary summer reading, and the establishment of libraries at hotels and summer resorts. These include the Athenaeum library at Saratoga and the library at the Poland Spring resort in Maine. Other than a fascinating mention of guests at various resort communities hosting fundraisers for the local public library, there is no consideration of the public library and summer reading, although the public library does appear in many of the diaries and letters that she cites. Rounding out the volume is a chapter on the Chautauqua Assemblies, other summer schools, and the Catholic Reading Circles, which bear witness to the continuing tension between the desire for light, leisurely summer reading, and the cultural pressure for self and social improvement through reading “the best books.”The book is of interest to anyone interested in the social and cultural history of reading in the United States. It fills a gap in the current literature on print culture in nineteenth-century America in regard to popular fiction. While works such as Sarah Wadsworth's In the Company of Books: Literature and Its “Classes” in Nineteenth-Century America and Lawrence W. Levine's Highbrow Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America include popular fiction among the topics they explore, Harrington-Leuker's is the only work devoted specifically to popular fiction and to summer reading and to the role of the publisher in that phenomenon. It provides a background to works such as Joan Shelley Rubin's The Making of Middlebrow Culture, which focus on popular fiction, book club, and reading groups in the twentieth century. It also creates a need for additional works on summer reading in the nineteenth century that would approach it from different perspectives. Certainly there is room for additional work on African Americans and summer reading, as well as the previously mentioned public library and summer reading, and, of course, for the history of children and their summer reading beyond their participation in library summer reading programs.

이파촌의 ｢暴風雨 지난 後｣ 연구

이 글은 그동안 논의되지 않았던 이파촌의 「폭풍우 지난 후」를 살펴보고자 했다. 이 작품은 １９３０년대 『조선일보』에 연재된 대중소설이다. 작가보다 작품이 중요하다고 볼 때, 비주류의 신진작가의 소설이지만 시의적인 면에 있어서 주목할 필요가 있다. 작품은 대중소설이지만 통속성에만 치우치지 않고 사회주의와 긴밀한 연관성을 보이고 있다. 이는 주인공이 선하고 반동인물이 악한 스테레오 타입의 인물유형을 깨고, 주인공이 악하고 반동인물이 선한 사회주의자라는 독특한 구성에서도 드러난다. 이렇게 뒤바뀐 인물의 성격창조 방식은 애정서사 안에 사회주의가 은폐되어 있음을 역설적으로 드러낸다. 작품은 검열을 피하기 위한 방법으로 멜로드라마의 구성을 취하되, 독자의 도덕적 정서에 호응하는 사회주의의 긍정성을 보여준다. 작품에서 사회주의의 유무는 선악의 세계와 대응한다. 이로 볼 때 「폭풍우 지난 후」는 사회주의를 내재한 대중소설로, 사회주의가 대중소설의 대중성을 확보하는 요소로서 기능할 수 있음을 시사해준다．

Satire and Humour in Jane Austen’s ‘Northanger Abbey’

Northanger Abbey’ is a commentary on as well as satire of the popular Gothic novels of Austen’s era. She was exploiting public interest in the creaky house, creaky older man and frightened virginal young heroine tropes of the era’s popular Gothic novel. As it is in one of the hardest novels of Austen, people miss its satire. Here, we get a brilliant satire on the ridiculousness of the events, settings, and emotions of gothic novels in general.

Access Paths: On Popular Women’s Literature and Criticism

Referring to critical statements that have appeared during the last few years, the author discusses ways of commenting on popular literature penned by female authors. One may distinguish five types of comments, 1) Appropriation (Aneksja), employed when a popular novel is included in the socially important literature referring to pressing and alarming problems (e.g. domestic violence). 2) Playing with convention (Gra z konwencją), based on pinpointing both grotesque and ironic elements and, above all, metaliterary signals in popular novels. 3) Adherence to tradition (Zgodnie z tradycją), best represented in the secondary literature, either through a poetologic approach (structural analyses) or approaches inspired by feminist criticism. 4) Exhortation to pay close attention (Dobrze się wschłuchać), focused on the approaches suggested by other fields, e.g. how popular women’s literature is read by sociologists. 5) Focus on emotions and excess (Emocje i zbytek), based on emotional and therapeutic research on the perception styles of popular literature. In this case, one focuses not on popular women’s fiction, but on the way it influences the readers’ emotions.

Changing Reality through Fiction: A Cognitive Approach to Late Ottoman Literature

Can popular fiction influence social change? Many scholars of late Ottoman literature have suggested that early Ottoman novelists believed so and wrote fiction to influence the mindset of their audience. Some of these novelists are known to achieve intergenerational social influence through their works. However, some questions have not been asked: How does it work? How does reading fiction affect the reader’s mind? How can popular fiction change ideas and beliefs in society? Accordingly, how might popular novelists have influenced the mindset of the last Ottoman generation? This article proposes some preliminary answers to these questions by focusing on the most influential Ottoman intellectual and novelist of the late nineteenth century, Ahmed Midhat Efendi. Informed by recent research in cognitive sciences, it explores how Ahmed Midhat used fiction to simulate an ideal societal future and to reshape his readers’ mindsets as the first step toward it. This study argues that early Ottoman novelists’ intuitive belief in the power of fiction is now affirmed by cognitive sciences.

Jules Verne and the Media

502 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 47 (2020) provide a convenient overview of the tradition. The book perhaps lacks a comprehensive discussion of the concept of history, and of the multiple competing narratives jostling for hegemony. While some chapters address this topic in specific textual contexts, a more general discussion would have helped. On the whole, however, this collection is a welcome addition to scholarship on alternative histories.—Suparno Banerjee, Texas State University Jules Verne and the Media. Guillaume Pinson and Maxime Prévost, eds. Jules Verne et la culture médiatique [Jules Verne and Media Culture]. Québec, Canada: Presses de l’Université Laval, COLLECTION LITTÉRATURE ET IMAGINAIRE CONTEMPORAIN, 2019. viii+256 pp. CAN$29.95 pbk and ebk. In their introduction to this recent collection of essays on Verne, the editors make the observation that few authors of world literature were as deeply immersed in the media culture of their time as Jules Verne. They may be right. During his writing career Verne leaned heavily on newspapers, popular magazines, and scientific journals both for plot ideas and technical documentation for the 50+ novels of his Voyages Extraordinaires. As he explained during one of his many interviews: I am a great reader, and ... I always read pencil in hand. I always carry a notebook about with me and immediately jot down ... anything that interests me or may appear to be of possible use in my books. To give you an idea of my reading, I come here every day after lunch and immediately set to work to read through fifteen different papers, always the same fifteen, and I can tell you that very little in any of them escapes my attention. When I see anything of interest, down it goes. Then I read the reviews, such as the Revue Bleue, the Revue Rose, the Revue des Deux Mondes, Cosmos, Tissandier’s La Nature, and Flammarion’s L’Astronomie. I also read through the bulletins of the scientific societies, especially those of the Geographical Society.... (R.H. Sherard, “Jules Verne at Home.” McClure’s Magazine 2.2 [Jan. 1894]: 120-21) It is also important to remember that the majority of Verne’s novels first appeared in his publisher Hetzel’s semimonthly periodical, the Magasin d’éducation et de récréation [Magazine of Education and Recreation], before being reprinted as octavo books and translated into many languages. As a lucrative follow-up to his early work in the theater, Verne had a hand in adapting several of his more popular novels to the stage; Around the World in Eighty Days (1874), for example, played to sell-out crowds in over 3000 performances between the late 1870s and 1940 (see Jean-Michel Margot, “Jules Verne, Playwright” SFS 32.1 [2005]: 150-71). The nineteenth-century press is further represented by the many newspaper reporters and journalists who populate Verne’s narratives, including Gédéon Spilett in The Mysterious Island (1870), Alcide Jolivet and Harry Blount in Michael Strogoff (1876), Claudius Bombarnac in the novel of the same name (1892), and Harris Kymbale in The Will of an Eccentric (1899). In the American pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, editors such as Hugo Gernsback popularized the notion of Verne as one of the inventors of “scientifiction” (a drawing of Verne’s tombstone even appeared on the title page of Amazing Stories). And Verne later became 503 BOOKS IN REVIEW universally recognized as “the father of science fiction on screen” (Brian Taves, Hollywood Presents Jules Verne, 2015) with several blockbuster films such as 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1916, 1954), From the Earth to the Moon (1958), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959, 1999), Master of the World (1961) and Mysterious Island (1961, 2012). Finally, beginning in the late 1980s, Verne’s romans scientifiques and their many spin-offs are credited with having inspired the retrofuturistic neo-Victorian sf subgenre known as steampunk. Much like steampunk—which owes its popularity more to its aesthetic (fashion, art objects, and architectural style) than its print narratives—Verne’s relationship to media culture goes much deeper than his literary production. As Jean-Michel Margot correctly observes, during his lifetime Verne...

Alois Musil and the Oriental studies fellowships in the 1920s

Professor Alois Musil, Orientalist, Arabist, theologist, traveller, and writer of popular novels, is well known as an explorer of the Middle East, discoverer of Amra castle, and as a founding father of the Oriental Institute in Prague. According to the recent research of his correspondence, an incredible network of contacts, with scholars settled in high positions in learned societies, politicians, and state officials, was found. Alois Musil was not only a receiver of donations and grants but also asked his ‘pen friends’ to donate money or arrange a suitable job for his colleagues and students. In my study, I would like to focus on (not only) Musil’s role in the creation of academic positions for Orientalists as well as on the other possibilities that enabled Orientalists to continue in the job they dreamed about during their university studies.

Эволюция подхода к романам на русскую тему в рецензиях Англо-русского литературного общества

From the very beginning of its existence, Anglo-Russian Literary Society had D.M. Wallace’s following words as its motto. At the end of his his book Russia, he writes: “Meanwhile, our [as the English] duty is clear. We ought to know Russia better.” Eager promoter of Russian culture and literature since 1893, the Society nevertheless was ignoring popular English novels on Russian themes for quite a long time. In 1899, a “specially invited discussion” revealed the reason for this hostile silence: according to the Society, “the representation of Russian life in English novels had been misleading.” However, 10 years after its foundation, the Society began publishing reviews on these novels in its Proceedings. Moreover, the tone of these reviews may be described as moderately favorable. The analysis of the papers allows me to assume that this shift may be explained by the change of criteria applied to the novels (the criterion of “educativeness” was balanced by the criterion of entertainment): the popularizing function of these novels finally comes first.

한국 대중소설의 펠트센스적 표현에 관한 탐색적 연구

한국 대중소설의 펠트센스적 표현에 관한 탐색적 연구

Competing Identity and Culture: The Formation of Forum Lingkar Pena and Komunitas Matapena in Indonesia

This study focusses on the genealogy of the Forum Lingkar Pena and Komunitas Matapena movements, which have produced novel Islam remaja (Islamic youth novels) and novel pop pesantren (pesantren popular novels). Using Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, I analyze the field where Forum Lingkar Pena and Komunitas Matapena discourses are disseminated, particularly among Muslim youth in Indonesia and how Islamic popular culture is represented through these novels and the dynamic of youth Muslims’ community struggle for meaning in the Indonesian literary field in general. This research found that establishment of FLP and Komunitas Matapena can be described through three main ideas. Firstly, these communities encountered the massiveness of popular culture by offering a medium that supports identity formation for Muslim youth. Secondly, there is a link between the idealism promoted by Muslim organization movements and the establishment of FLP and Komunitas Matapena, and this link determines their forms and cultural products. Thirdly, they use popular culture, such as magazines and popular novels, as media to spread and preserve their idealism, targeting young people. Keyword: Islamic youth, FLP, habitus, popular culture, identity

L'assenza del narratore come dispositivo di validazione del reale nel romanzo di Adelchi Battista. La voce silente di Io sono la guerra

In his 2012 novel Io sono la guerra Adelchi Battista tries to eliminate the voice of the narrator in order to create an impersonal narrative that should allow history to ‘speak by itself’ through the documents the author integrated in the novel. The present contribution aims to analyze the novel from two different but closely linked perspectives. On the one hand, this analysis will focus on the author’s formal and stylistic choices – mainly on impersonality – in the light of the recent ever-growing demand for ‘true stories’. On the other hand, the choice of many authors nowadays to write historical novels in which there is no clear distinction between fictional elements (whenand ifthey are present anyway) and documented facts poses many problems in regard to the readers’ response to these texts. The analysis will try to tackle difficult questions such as: what is the relationship (if there is one) between the way these popular novels are constructed and the way the readers perceive their reality?

Open Literacy: Helen of Troy, Richard Hoggart, Phonic Wars, Greta Thunberg

Abstract Social media and videogames are often blamed for individual behavioural delinquency, but rarely praised for cultural creativity, social innovation, or helping us to form new social groups or work through new ideas. Videogames are now a political football, both in the US (where they’re blamed for gun crime) and in China (where they’re blamed for childhood myopia). Every new media form has grown up surrounded by those wanting to control it. Popular literacy has never been free and open. Popular novels and the press; cinema and TV; and more recently digital and social media, have all attracted the wrath of incumbent commercial, government or social interests. But in the era of open access, open science, open knowledge, what about open literacy? Can it be extended to whole populations, across demographic borders, at global scale, for purposeless but nevertheless pedagogic play, and for social innovation? Or will it, like predecessor forms, be dismissed as a delinquent waste of time or commodified instrument for profit, power and mass persuasion?

Ciri Intrinsik Novel Populer Indonesia yang Terbit Tahun 1980-An

Since the growth of the Indonesian press industry in the 1970s, popular novels have been carried away by the rapid development of the mass media world. Because, there are facts and data that most of Indonesia's popular novels were originally published as serials in newspapers and magazines. Convincingly people can classify certain novels into groups of literary novels or popular novels. The reasons that are subjective are not appropriate to be used as a criterion for determining certain novels as serious (literary) novels or popular novels, because the considerations used are only based on personal perception. Of course it is scientifically less accountable, because it is not based on clear theories and methods, for example by looking at intrinsic and extrinsic structures, or also its sociological aspects. Therefore, an inventory of the intrinsic features of popular novels is very important. These characteristics include romantic-sentimental, love and household themes, single channel, straight channeling, contemporary dialogue, physical background of a rich family environment, educated family, campus, spectacular and explosive disposition, anti-double meaning, no need for aesthetic understanding .

Citra Perempuan dalam Novel Metropop “Tetralogi Empat Musim” Karya Ilana Tan

When the storyline of chick lit and teen lit is always dominated by female figures, the metropop shows female and male figures. However, like popular novels that are more read and written by women, the metropop always presents issues that are centered on women. Therefore, this research was conducted with the aim of revealing the image of women in the ‘Tetralogi Empat Musim’ metropop by Ilana Tan consisting of ‘Summer in Seoul’ (2006), ‘Autumn in Paris’ (2007), ‘Winter in Tokyo’ (2008), and ‘Spring in London’ (2010). Data was collected by note-taking technique, and analyzed by descriptive-qualitative method. The methodological approach and the theoretical basis adopted for this research are feminist literary criticism. The results of the analyse indicate that in the tetralogy, (1) female self-image is displayed subject with TWITS (Teenage Women in Their 30s) characteristics, namely single, independent, working, aged between 24-30 years, beautiful and attractive, living in urban areas, lifestyle metropolis, heterosexual, and have character ‘The Waif’, and have 'weakness'. (2) The social image of women is described as being still the object of a patriarchal system in the form of dependence on male figures due to love relationships.

Dudus, Viv and Vybz

Since independence, Jamaica has grappled with the sociopolitical legacies of colonialism in forging a new national path. Politicians and academics alike seem to be struggling to find solutions to the country's problems. Meanwhile, violence continues to grow exponentially, corruption is entrenched, and definitions of right versus wrong are highly subjective. The figure of the anti-hero or outlaw in Jamaican culture has long been prominent – we think of eighteenth-century rebel leaders such as Three-Finger[ed] Jack. More recently, the rebel rude bwoys of the 1960s morphed into rebels with a political cause in the 1970s; then into the nihilistic shottas, rankings and drug dons of the 1980s, who have attained and retained the status of outlaw/hero/anti-hero up to today. This essay explores the published writings on some of Jamaica's dons which seemingly seek to legitimise their activities: Duane Blake’s 2002 biography of his father Vivian Blake, drug kingpin and alleged leader of the notorious Shower Posse; and K. C. Samuels’ 2011 book on Tivoli don and international drug kingpin Christopher “Dudus” Coke. Both texts fascinatingly demonstrate the transnational scope of the dons’ activities, as well as their organizational genius, a representation reinforced by popular novels such as Prince Kofi's 2007 Yardies and Errol McDonald’s 2006 Legitimate Resistance, that also emphasize the theme of dons as freedom fighters and promote violence and illegal activities as a legitimate solution to society's wrongs. Meanwhile, the outlaw figure has always been reflected in Jamaican popular music; and of particular interest to this essay is the infamous gangster DJ Vybz Kartel's 2012 Voice of the Jamaican Ghetto in which he positions himself as a radical leader and social activist, again asserting that in the frontier society of Jamaica, new paradigms of order/disorder, of morality/immorality/amorality, of right/wrong, prevail.

Charlie Chaplin in the vernacular modernism of the Polish interwar period

The article attempts to characterize „vernacular modernism” in the Polish culture of the interwar period on the example of the fi gure of Charlie Chaplin, which appears very often in Polish literature of that time. The famous comedian was an idol not only for the writers of popular novels, but also for the Skamandrits and futurist poets. In the interwar period low culture and high culture began to intermix. For the Skamandrits, like Julian Tuwim, Chaplin represented a new model of democratic art, in which the artist became a producer of entertainment. The futurist poets, in turn, saw Chaplin as an archetypal trickster, an anarchist who destroyed the social order and created a modern form of art. For writers like Leo Belmont, Charlie the tramp was a „wise fool”, a poor man who is rejected by the modern society. Chaplin was so useful for the Polish writers because he symbolized both bright and dark sides of modernity.

Criminal Acts at Sea

Criminal Acts at Sea. The most popular novels and movies with whom we grew up, have been shown by pirates mostly as romantic adventurers, rather than as bloodthirsty robberies and killers. One of the reasons for this is that many of the pirates throughout history have had the status of national heroes (like Francis Drake and Henry Morgan) which has affected the distorted view of actual pirates.

Democracy and Feudalistic between Daisy Miller and Mrs. Costello through Sociological Approach as reflected in Daisy Miller (1879)

There are several kinds of literary works. They are a poem, novel, fiction, drama,etc. Daisy Miller is one of the famous and popular novels. This novel is written inthe spring of London. The Author is Henry James. The writer analyzed this novel bythe sociological approach. This research applies qualitative research which thedata are taken from the analysis document and material from books and internetresearch. Data analysis concerns the interpretative technique that focuses onexamining data. The main source of this research is the novel Daisy Miller thisresearch is going to answer the research questions what is the characteristic ofdemocracy and Feudalistic is as reflected in Daisy miller novel? And what are thephenomena between democracy and Feudalistic in Daisy Miller novel? From theanalysis the author concluded that Daisy Miller is a representative of Americanwoman as same as democracy in the American Custom, She is going abroad toSwitzerland which is peaceful country inhabited by all kinds of people of differentrace, ethnic, language, skin color, religion, profession, from all over the world.The Henry James as the author showed Daisy Miller as a vulgar and as free asthe representation of American culture that has correlated with the social life. On theother hand, the author describes Mrs. Costello as a Feudalistic of Europeanculture. Mrs. Costello is a representation as European social-life that alwaysdistinguishes between high and low status and it is one of the character of Feudalism.The feudalistic was that the power of the ruling class or Aristocracy rested on theircontrol of the farmable lands, leading to a class based upon the exploitation of thepeasants who farm these lands.

Smoke and Mirrors: Secret Societies and Self-Reflexivity in the mystères urbains

This article reflects on the literary theoretical and literary historical significance of secret societies in the mysteres urbains, a large corpus of popular novels produced in the latter half of the nineteenth century in response to the unprecedented success of Eugene Sue’s Mysteres de Paris (1842–43). In these novels, representations of secret societies challenge and transform our understanding of l’envers and, by extension, our approach to the (rewritten) text. Distorted reflections, by pointing to the shared preoccupations of readers of “popular” and “serious” literatures, hint at the arbitrary nature of groupings both within and outside the text. A protean system of initiates and outsiders echoes the engagements of both an exclusive “Happy Few” and an indiscriminate “masse idiote” with the text itself. The fusion of heterogeneous characters into fictional secret societies echoes the efforts made to demystify and defuse the threat of a new and alarmingly disparate reading public.