Walking and the French Romantics: Rousseau to Sand and Hugo (French Studies of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, V. 13)

"Walking and the French Romantics explores for the first time the relationship between walking and Romanticism in France. It maps this relationship as theme and practice, no social history of pedestrian tours in nineteenth-century France having been written. In this connection, the legacy of Rousseau and Senancour proves stronger than has been recognized, in spite of the pull of Paris and its legendary urban "flaneurs. The author brings out the role of painters and of figures like Nodier, Didier and Dumas in encouraging writers to go (or imagine themselves) on the road and shows how and why pedestrian touring became popular with authors in the late 1830s. He discusses the impact of this fashion on major Romantic writers such as Nerval, Sand and Hugo. Finally he describes how walking lost its particular cultural connection with Romanticism in the 1840s. Sure French Romantics advocated liberty, change, variety, and reverie as fervently as their English and German counterparts, says Thompson (French, U. of Warwick), but did they did ramble so around country roads? His detailed study shows that country walks were more frequent, and literary uses of the figure of the walker more successful, than is immediately apparent. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR