Napoleon III and His Regime: An Extravaganza (Modernist Studies) - Hardcover

Baguley, David

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9780807126240: Napoleon III and His Regime: An Extravaganza (Modernist Studies)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807126241 ISBN 13: 9780807126240

Publisher: LSU Press, 2000

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Referred to in his time as “the Pretender” and “the sphinx of the Tuileries,” Louis Napol�on Bonaparte―the nephew of Emperor Napoleon I of France and himself ruler of the Second Empire (1852–1870)―so managed the manufacture of his public image and the masking of his private self that he is, ultimately, unknowable to this day. From the mysterious circumstances of his conception in 1807 to the strange events of his downfall in 1870 and death in 1873, he lived, loved, and reigned in an extraordinary aura of myth and fantasy under the shadow of his more famous uncle.

Taking a highly innovative approach to this intriguing historical figure, David Baguley entertains sources in a m�lange of media and forms―pictures, performances, spectacles, rituals, music, fiction, poems, plays, architecture, fashion, as well as Louis Napol�on’s own writings―to explore how the ruler was represented, invented, and interpreted by detractors and defenders alike. The dynamic process by which the legend of Napoleon III was elaborately fabricated and then vigorously dismantled unfolds under Baguley’s hand not chronologically but by generic categories, reflecting the author’s underlying conviction that history and literary depictments are not as incompatible as is often assumed.

Baguley examines works by, among many others, Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, �mile Zola, Honor� Daumier, Jacques Offenbach, Gustave Flaubert, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning that range from history and biography to romanticized versions of the Emperor’s feats to parody, caricature, and satire. With its conspiratorial origins, its rising and dramatically falling action, its schemes, scandals, and tragic denouement, the Second Empire appears designed to inspire writers and artists. Napoleon III, Baguley observes, could well have been the central character, or temperament, in a naturalist novel.

While most historians consider Louis Napol�on’s coup d’�tat of December 1851 to be his boldest endeavor, Baguley shows in this expansive and eloquent work that his most extravagant venture was to found a second Napoleonic empire, and he illustrates not only the power of the name and the image but also the precariousness of the Emperor’s reliance upon them. For Napoleon III, dissimulation was his natural state; opportunist or utopian reformer, or something in between, he must remain one of history’s most elusive and controversial figures, ever resisting final assessment.

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About the Author:

David Baguley holds the Chair of French at the University of Durham, England, and is the author of six books on �mile Zola and the naturalist movement. He taught previously at the University of Western Ontario for more than twenty years and has published numerous articles on nineteenth-century French literature.

From Booklist:

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was the nephew of Napoleon I, and he was quite conscious that he reigned in the shadow of his uncle. History has not judged him favorably. In domestic affairs, he presided over the cultural brilliance of France, but the Second Empire, which he founded, was politically corrupt and authoritarian in an era that cried out for an enlightened liberalism. In foreign affairs, his immense ego led to meddlesome blunders and a humiliating defeat by Germany. Of course, there is more to the man and to his career. Baguley, a French specialist at the University of Durham, England, uses a variety of sources, including substantial accounts by Louis Napoleon's contemporaries, to provide an interesting portrait of both the man and his times. Although Baguley does not view him as an admirable or even a sympathetic figure, Louis Napoleon was certainly an important one^B, because his two-decade reign encompassed some of the most critical developments in modern European history. This work will be a necessary and valuable addition to a European history collection. Jay Freeman
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