Cholera in Post-Revolutionary Paris
Cholera in Post-Revolutionary Paris

Author: Catherine J. Kudlick

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-12-22

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 0520916980

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Cholera terrified and fascinated nineteenth-century Europeans more than any other modern disease. Its symptoms were gruesome, its sources were mysterious, and it tended to strike poor neighborhoods hardest. In this insightful cultural history, Catherine Kudlick explores the dynamics of class relations through an investigation of the responses to two cholera epidemics in Paris. While Paris climbed toward the height of its urban and industrial growth, two outbreaks of the disease ravaged the capital, one in 1832, the other in 1849. Despite the similarity of the epidemics, the first outbreak was met with general frenzy and far greater attention in the press, popular literature and personal accounts, while the second was greeted with relative silence. Finding no compelling evidence for improved medical knowledge, changes in the Paris environment, or desensitization of Parisians, Kudlick looks to the evolution of the French revolutionary tradition and the emergence of the Parisian bourgeoisie for answers.

Herman Melville's Malcolm Letter
Herman Melville's Malcolm Letter

Author: Hennig Cohen

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9780823211845

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The Malcolm Letter was written by Melville in 1849 on the birth of his son. This letter is one of thirty-six to be retrieved since the publication of The Letters of Herman Melville (1960) and has earned a place in the New York Public Library's Gansevoort-Lansing Collection. Addressed to Melville's brother, the letter entices critics to read it on several levels. It reveals Melville's serious consideration of his own father's influence on his upbringing as he anticipates undertaking the role of father himself. It is not a literary work, but a deeply personal outpouring distinguished by dark underpinnings barely hidden by his light-hearted tone. In a bit of dramatic irony, Melville reflects on the responsibility looming ahead of him as the reader notes the tragedy that Melville cannot possibly foresee - his son Malcolm's suicide eighteen years later. Cohen's and Yannella's careful study relives for the reader this and other events which shaped the clannish Melville family history. They also show how the author's struggle with these pressures are manifested in his writing. This volume is published in cooperation with the New York Public Library.