ABSTRACT
Key works of popular fiction are often rewritten to capitalize on their success. But what are the implications of this rewriting process? Such is the question addressed by this detailed study of several rewritings of Eugène Sue’s Mystères de Paris (1842-43), produced in the latter half of the nineteenth century, in response to the phenomenal success of Sue’s archetypal urban mystery. Pursuing a compelling analogy between city and text, and exploring the resonance of the palimpsest trope to both, Amy Wigelsworth argues that the mystères urbains are exemplary rewritings, which shed new light on contemporary reading and writing practices, and emerge as early avatars of a genre still widely consumed and enjoyed in the 21st century.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |12 pages
Introduction
part |42 pages
Contexts
chapter |13 pages
Mystery: Narrative and Theory
chapter |14 pages
Reading Urban Space: The City as Text
chapter |14 pages
The Palimpsest Trope
part |74 pages
The Mystères Transposed
chapter |26 pages
Americanizations
chapter |22 pages
The Past is a Foreign City: Historicization
chapter |24 pages
Future Perfect?: Utopia
part |3 pages
Feuilleton, Performance, and Parody
chapter |30 pages
La Suite à demain: Serializing the City
chapter |21 pages
The City en scène: Theatre Adaptations
chapter |26 pages
The ‘Carnivalesque' and the Conservative: Parody as Palimpsest
part |5 pages
Conclusion