Work and Leisure in Late Nineteenth-Century French Literature and Visual Culture

In this engaging new study, Claire White reveals how representations of work and leisure became the vehicle for anxieties and fantasies about class and alienation, affecting, in turn, the ways in which writers and artists understood their own cultural work.

“Claire White presents a fresh, interdisciplinary perspective on the ‘alternation of toil and festivity’ during the nineteenth century … . White’s book provides  an innovative interdisciplinary approach to questions on the discourse surrounding nineteenth-century French literature and art, framing the larger philosophical debates generated by the tensions between modernity and modernism in the context of work and leisure.” (Karen Turman, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. 44, Winter, 2015/2016)

Claire White is a Research Fellow at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, UK. She has published on a range of nineteenth-century French literature in journals such as Romanic Review and Modern Language Review.