The demolitions of Paris: Modernity in Rocambole (1857-1870)

Abstract

Based on the reading of the serial novel Rocambole, this article analyzes the transformations of the city of Paris during the II Empire of Napoleon III, investigating the representations of the nineteenth century civilizing process, the bourgeois experience as well as the relationship between the city and the history of the novel. The research intends to think, from the feuilletonistic narrative, how the urban experience has been experienced in modern Paris. The city of Paris was the center stage for the adventures of Rocambole. Posed by Ponson du Terrail as "Modern Babylon", the French capital was itself an important character in the plot. The urban life represented by the author includes the circulation in Parisian landscapes from rich and noble neighborhoods, and also the suburbs plagued by poverty. The concept of civilization that guides this research is based on the idea that individuals have shaped their behavior in response to demands created by the transformations that marked the nineteenth century. The transformations that characterized the period, related to the idea of progress, resulted in the construction of the concept of modernity as a development of bourgeois thought in the public and private spheres. But the price of this enrichment of the personal sensitivity experienced from living in the city meant the removal of the psychological comforts of tradition and of any sense of participation in an integrated society. The Rocambole characters go through all these modern experiences in different ways, and represent the contradictions present in society and in the city of Paris.