French Long Fiction Since the 1850’s (Critical Survey of Long Fiction)
Historical Background
The ascendancy of the novel as the prime literary genre in France was established, by no means accidentally, during the reign of the so-called Bourgeois King, Louis-Philippe. The shifting patterns of population and of economic status had made the middle class dominant, especially in Paris, that cradle of culture; it was perhaps no more than normal that the kind of reading the bourgeoisie preferred—the novel— should in that era have become what the nation as a whole preferred. The key factor in the novel’s development to ascendancy, during the years...
[The entire page is 10750 words long]
