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This article offers a deeper understanding of Hugo's social philosophy as expressed in Les Misérables through a reading of the novel's treatment of prostitution and Parisian sewers in the context of contemporary thought. Specifically, Hugo reframes the prostitute- as- sewer metaphor that was commonplace among contemporaries such as Parent- Duchâtelet. First, in the story of Fantine, he provides a narrative articulation of the social problem of prostitution that reveals the full import of Parent- Duchâtelet's work on the subject. Then he offers an alternate understanding of the sewer to which the prostitute was often compared, and simultaneously expands his metaphorical treatment of the sewers to include all of society's outcasts. Hugo thus rewrites prevailing social thought to advocate for a new relationship between society and its most disadvantaged members as well as the reintegration of les misérables into the social whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions the panoramic genre through a study of Les Français peints par eux-mêmes and its relation with natural history. Both Janin and Balzac saw similarities between the volumes' social taxonomies and the scientific classifications of the period. At stake in the matter is the question of who "les Français" are and what traits can be put forward as part of a common national identity. Yet, both writers--and ultimately the collective project as a whole-- constantly question the taxonomies that their texts are building, eventually casting a doubt on the possibility of classification itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first installment of Louis Viardot’s translation of the sixteenth-century Spanish novel El Lazarillo de Tormes appeared in Le Siècle in the summer of 1836, weeks before the publication of Balzac’s Une Vieille Fille inaugurated the age of the serial novel in France. Viardot’s reading of the picaresque novel, inscribed both in his introductory comments as well as in the fabric of the translation itself, reinserts the text within the outlines of a new, socially and politically engaged literature for a broader readership. At the same time, the translation’s incongruities reveal the contradictions inherent to debates over the question sociale. This article situates Viardot’s translation among the changing socio-cultural discourses and practices that both informed and were informed by the emergence of a modern popular press and literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]