# Victims of the Book: Reading and Masculinity in Fin-de-Si�cle France - Hardcover

by **Francois Proulx** (Author)

_Victims of the Book_ uncovers a long-neglected but once widespread subgenre: the fin-de-siècle novel of formation in France. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, social commentators insistently characterized excessive reading as an emasculating illness that afflicted French youth. Novels about and geared toward adolescent male readers were imbued with a deep worry over young Frenchmen's masculinity, as evidenced by titles like _Crise de jeunesse_ (_Youth in Crisis_, 1897), _La Crise virile_ (_Crisis of Virility_, 1898), _La Vie stérile_ (_A Sterile Life_, 1892), and _La Mortelle Impuissance_ (_Deadly Impotence_, 1903). In this book, François Proulx examines a wide panorama of these novels, as well as polemical essays, pedagogical articles, and medical treatises on the perceived threats posed by young Frenchmen's reading habits.

  

Fin-de-siècle writers responded to this pathologization of reading with a profusion of novels addressed to young male readers, paradoxically proposing their own novels as potential cures. In the early twentieth century, this corpus was critically revisited by a new generation of writers. _Victims of the Book_ shows how André Gide and Marcel Proust in particular reworked the fin-de-siècle paradox to subvert cultural norms about literature and masculinity, proposing instead a queer pact between writer and reader.

**Number of Pages:** 408

**Dimensions:** 1.5 x 9.1 x 6 IN

**Illustrated:** Yes

**Publication Date:** November 08, 2019

## Details

- **Price:** 165.87 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 165.87 USD | In stock |

## Images

- Victims of the Book: Reading and Masculinity in Fin-de-Si�cle France - Hardcover

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