Consumer Chronicles
Cultures of Consumption in Modern French Literature
Distributed for Liverpool University Press
At a time when the world is facing the depletion of nonrenewable natural resources, consumer society is increasingly being called into question. Nowhere is this more evident than in France, where the consumer revolution has long been perceived as a challenge to artisanal crafts, local business, and other key elements of French culture. David H. Walker here charts the portrayal of consumer behavior in the works of Gide, Zola, Jean Valmy-Basse, and Elsa Triolet and analyzes these testimonies in relation to their social, cultural and historical milieu. Consumer Chronicles offers an imaginative look at the impact of affluence on French consumers, shopkeepers, and society and provides valuable insight into the history of the consumer mentality in the twentieth century.
“Consumer Chronicles is a work of impeccable scholarship, and possesses the virtues of ample illustration, detailed demonstration, and the relentless, exhaustive pursuit of a single broad topic.”
Introduction
I. Waiting for the Consumer Society
1. Earning, Yearning, and Making Do: Huysmans, Les Sœurs Vatard
2. Flâneurs and Shoppers: Huysmans, En ménage
3. From Shopping to Schopenhauer: Huysmans, A vau-l'eau
II. Economies of Consumption (1)
4. Transactions and Value: Gide, L'Immoraliste
III. Small Shops
5. La Lente Agonie du petit commerce? Balzac, Grandeur et decadence de César Birotteau and Zola, Au bonheur des dames
6. Elevé dans le commerce: Céline, Mort à crédit
7. The Emporium Strikes Back: Dutourd, Au Bon Beurre
IV. Big Stories
8. The Big Sell
9. The grand magasin: Zola, Au bonheur des dames (2)
10. 'Les Vénus des comptoirs': Feminism and Shopping in the 1920s
11. Total Retail: Figures of the Dystopian Superstore
V. Economies of Consumption (2)
12. Speculations on Value
VI. Reflections on the Consumer Society
13. Post-war Visions of Paradise: The Dawning of the Consumer Society
14. Managing the Consumers (1): Motivational Analysts
15. Managing the Consumers (2): Advertisers
16. The Consumers Managing (1): Making Do by Instalments
17. The Consumers Managing (2): Making Do and Producing
Conclusion: A Good Buy?
Bibliography
Index
Literature and Literary Criticism: Romance Languages
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