This article examines Ernest Feydeau's autobiographical text Consolation (1872) as a precursor to the genre of disability life writing. Through the lens of (literary) disability studies, we argue that Consolation offers a radical critique of the treatment of people with disabilities in his period. Nevertheless, due to the internalization of popular images and notions of disability, Consolation also makes use of stereotypical disability narratives and metaphors. The article analyzes the ambivalent nature of Feydeau's text and rejects previous interpretations of his writing as mere self-pity or sensationalism. Instead, it shows how Consolation sheds new light on nineteenth-century discourses of disability.
This article examines two physiologies by Eug & egrave;ne de Monglave and B.T. Duverger on Paris's primary garbage dump, Montfaucon, to illuminate underexplored connections between literary form and hygienist thought in July Monarchy Paris. To this end, these sketches are read alongside Claude Lachaise's medical topography of Paris and Alexandre Parent-Duch & acirc;telet's administrative reports to reveal how these physiologies recycle and refashion scientific concepts for a broader readership. de Monglave and Duverger's texts on Montfaucon reflect a moralising, sanitary judgment towards the dump's workers and urban space more generally, treating Montfaucon's workers as members of a race apart who threaten the public's health.
This article examines the theatrical and grotesque aesthetics of Les Chants de Maldoror, arguing that Lautr & eacute;amont constructs readerly complicity through spectacle, apostrophe and syntactic violence. Drawing on Gothic criticism, narratology and psychoanalysis, it situates Maldoror's grotesque tableaux within nineteenth-century theatrical culture, particularly the Grand Guignol. The analysis engages theories of abjection (Kristeva), ungrammaticality (Riffaterre), hypotyposis (Metzidakis and Sureau) and spectacle (Samuels, Schwartz), showing how the poem transforms reading into a kind of staged suffering. Ultimately, it defines a specifically Ducassian theatricality that collapses boundaries between reader, stage and monstrosity in a poetics of ethical disorientation.
In November 1891, the most famous abortion case of nineteenth-century France made the headlines: the Affaire Thomas. One hundred and fifty suspects were initially investigated by the police, of which 118 were then investigated by the prosecutor, before fifty defendants were brought to court, including the abortionist Constance Thomas, 'La Mort aux gosses'. This faiseuse d'anges captured the public imagination, with help from extended coverage like Maurice Talmeyr's daily series 'Les Avorteuses de Paris' in Gil Blas. In 1900, Le Journal published a story among its faits divers under the title 'Les Meres coupables', which was to be the first of 221 issues to include at least one story featuring this headline between 1900 and 1911. Among the accounts of infanticide and abandonment, the series featured a handful of abortions. At the height of the column's popularity, yet another faiseuse d'anges gained notoriety on the front pages. Leonie Charretier, 'L'ogresse de la rue Tiquetonne', was arrested on the 26 December 1906 and faced trial in August the following year, accused of performing 1500 abortions. This story, among other faits divers, inspired journalist Gaston Tournier's novel, La Fabrique d'anges, which he completed in April 1907, the same year that satirical illustrated newspaper L'Assiette au Beurre released an issue on Les Faiseuses d'anges. This article raises questions of culpability and moral contagion, how abortion provided fertile ground for these writers, who condemned the act while profiting from the public's growing hunger for criminal scandals. It likewise problematises the consumption of these accounts and their potential impact on the female reader.
