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This book explores fictional responses to the changing transport and urban infrastructure of nineteenth-century France, arguing that networks of movement (and an accompanying 'culture of networks') which had become firmly established by the time of the Second Empire constitute a privileged subject for representation, and that naturalist fiction in particular is that representation's privileged form. Contextualizing the study's critical focus by way of a brief historical outline of the development of infrastructural networks in nineteenth-century France and a delineation of the problematical parameters of French naturalism, Duffy examines literary representations of new forms and conceptualisations of movement, principally in works by Flaubert, Zola, and Maupassant. Other authors discussed include the Goncourt brothers, Huysmans, Baudelaire and Claretie. Literary texts are examined alongside a range of related scientific, sociological and medical texts. What emerges strikingly from consideration of these works and the discourses they - often subversively - incorporate, is that movement, central to nineteenth-century industrial society's view of itself, is frequently perceived and presented self-deludingly in the idealised metaphorical terms of smoothly-functioning systems of perpetual motion, and that naturalist fiction, by exploiting to their full potential the same metaphors in its narratives, challenges this 'anti-entropic' vision.

Fiction --- Thematology --- French literature --- anno 1800-1899 --- City and town life in literature --- Transportation --- History and criticism --- Beweging in de literatuur --- Motion in literature --- Mouvement dans la littérature --- Naturalism in literature --- France --- French fiction --- 19th century --- French literature - 19th century - History and criticism --- Transportation - France --- City and town life in literature. --- History and criticism.

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Literature --- Criticism --- Political correctness in literature --- Critique --- Littérature --- Politiquement correct (Mouvement) dans la littérature --- Political aspects --- Social aspects --- Aspect politique --- Literature and society --- Politics and literature --- 82:3 --- 82:32 --- Appraisal of books --- Books --- Evaluation of literature --- Literary criticism --- Rhetoric --- Aesthetics --- Style, Literary --- Literature and politics --- Literature and sociology --- Society and literature --- Sociology and literature --- Sociolinguistics --- Literatuur en maatschappijwetenschappen --- Literatuur en politiek --- Appraisal --- Technique --- Evaluation --- Criticism. --- Literature and society. --- Political correctness in literature. --- Politics and literature. --- 82:32 Literatuur en politiek --- 82:3 Literatuur en maatschappijwetenschappen --- Littérature --- Politiquement correct (Mouvement) dans la littérature --- Critique littéraire --- Littérature et société --- Politique et littérature --- Politiquement correct (mouvement)