Nostalgia and identity
Jules Simon’s La Femme du Vingtième Siècle
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12905176 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kathryn Brown (0000-0001-5710-1708, Tilburg University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 224-231 |
| Publication date | 2010-06-30 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Memory Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1750-6980 • E-ISSN: 1750-6999 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1750698010364814 |
| OpenAlex | W2098098333 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
This article analyses Jules Simon’s nostalgic view of 17th-century femininity as part of his vision of French social reform during the 1890s. Simon’s enthusiasm for the past is located in the context of late 19th-century social criticism that prized a domestic role for women and used such a role to symbolize the re-establishment of boundaries between public and private life. Simon’s vision of female life underpins a form of social organization that sought to neutralize the ongoing effects of France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian war and the violence of France’s revolutionary past. I distinguish Simon’s nostalgic strategy from Jules and Edmond de Goncourt’s enthusiasm for the ancien régime and argue that Simon re-animates aspects of the past in order to temper progress in the new century. Nostalgia secures a preferred image of national identity and shapes an ideal narrative of both past and future
Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology · Criticism · Enthusiasm · Femininity · Humanities · Identity (music · Literature · Narrative · National identity · Political science · Politics · Sociology · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Historical Art and Culture Studies · History · Law · Literature and Culture Studies · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
|---|