Description
Book SynopsisDespite long-standing assertions that languages, including French and English, cannot sufficiently communicate the experience of smell, much of France’s nineteenth-century literature has gained praise for its memorable evocation of odours. As French perfume was industrialized, democratized, cosmeticized, and feminized in the nineteenth century, stories of fragrant scent trails aligned perfume with toxic behaviour and viewed a woman’s scent as something alluring, but also something to be controlled.
Drawing on a wealth of resources, Perfume on the Page in Nineteenth-Century France explores how fiction and related writing on olfaction meet, permeate, and illuminate one another. The book examines medical tracts, letters, manuscripts, posters, print advertisements, magazine articles, perfume manuals, etiquette books, interviews, and encounters with fragrant materials themselves. Cheryl Krueger explores how the olfactory language of a novel or poem conveys the
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments Notes on Translations, Spelling, Editions, Illustrations, and Previously Published Material Introduction: Something in the Air 1. In a Violet Sillage 2. The Language of Flowers and Silent Things 3. Confused Words? 4. The Osmazome of Literature 5. Perfumed Letters 6. Smelling (of) Iris 7. Decadent Perfuming Epilogue: Cooked Apples and Exotic Perfume Notes Bibliography Index
