Description

Les Mystères de Paris, Eugène Sue’s serialized novel of 1842-43, was one of the earliest French novels to focus on the working classes, and became an instant cross-cultural and international hit. It has not ceased to generate debate: around its project (simple potboiler or serious social reform?), its narrative aesthetics (crazy criss-crossed plotlines or proto-modernist collage?) and its ambiguous discursive strategies (populist and elitist, reformist and nationalist, abolitionist and racist, progressive and eugenic). We’ll...