Modernity And Its Discontents: French Society And The French Man Of Letters In The Nineteenth Century
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the turbulent crossroads of art, society, and political upheaval, nineteenth-century France produced a remarkable cast of writers who found themselves fundamentally at odds with the modern world they inhabited — and César Graña's Modernity and Its Discontents chronicles this profound tension with intellectual precision and cultural depth. Surveying the charged relationship between French society and its men of letters, the work presents a panoramic study of how figures such as Flaubert, Baudelaire, and their contemporaries responded to — and recoiled from — the sweeping forces of industrialisation, bourgeois culture, and democratic mass society. Graña argues that the alienation of the French literary intellectual was not merely a personal neurosis but a defining cultural posture, shaped by the specific pressures of a society in rapid and disorienting transformation. Drawing on sociology, history, and literary criticism in equal measure, the work illustrates how the antagonism between the artist and his age became a generative force in French cultural life, producing some of the most enduring works of Western literature. Graña's prose is measured yet compelling, blending scholarly rigour with a sensitivity to the human drama behind ideological conflict. Published as part of the prestigious Harper Torchbooks series, this study remains an essential text for anyone seeking to understand the cultural anxieties that gave birth to literary modernism — and why the discontents of that era still resonate so powerfully today.
Author: César Graña
Format: Paperback
Genre: Literary theory
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the turbulent crossroads of art, society, and political upheaval, nineteenth-century France produced a remarkable cast of writers who found themselves fundamentally at odds with the modern world they inhabited — and César Graña's Modernity and Its Discontents chronicles this profound tension with intellectual precision and cultural depth. Surveying the charged relationship between French society and its men of letters, the work presents a panoramic study of how figures such as Flaubert, Baudelaire, and their contemporaries responded to — and recoiled from — the sweeping forces of industrialisation, bourgeois culture, and democratic mass society. Graña argues that the alienation of the French literary intellectual was not merely a personal neurosis but a defining cultural posture, shaped by the specific pressures of a society in rapid and disorienting transformation. Drawing on sociology, history, and literary criticism in equal measure, the work illustrates how the antagonism between the artist and his age became a generative force in French cultural life, producing some of the most enduring works of Western literature. Graña's prose is measured yet compelling, blending scholarly rigour with a sensitivity to the human drama behind ideological conflict. Published as part of the prestigious Harper Torchbooks series, this study remains an essential text for anyone seeking to understand the cultural anxieties that gave birth to literary modernism — and why the discontents of that era still resonate so powerfully today.