Rewriting French Geographies in Les Français peints par eux-mêmes

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article considers the Paris-province divide, which has meaningfully shaped the way one imagines the French territory, and which Les Français peints par eux-mêmes problematizes during the first half of the nineteenth century by crafting in-between spaces where traits usually attributed to provincials seep into Parisians, or where Parisians get ‘provincialized'. This leads to the transformation of ‘Parisian' and ‘provincial’ into personal rather than geographical characteristics. In particular, I show that entries concerned with the question of travel and tourism postulate that in confronting Parisian and provincial Français, physical circulation had the potential to alter feelings of geographical belonging.