Le Grand Transit Moderne: Mobility, Modernity and French Naturalist Fiction

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 devel...