Paris Dreams, Paris Memories

The City and Its Mystique

Charles Rearick

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780804770934, 9780804770927
• eBook ISBN: 9780804777513
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: French History
• Index: History

How did Paris become the world favorite it is today? Charles Rearick argues that we can best understand Paris as several cities in one, each with its own history and its own imaginary shaped by dream and memory. Paris has long been at once a cosmopolitan City of Light and of modernity, a patchwork of time-resistant villages, a treasured heirloom, a hell for the disinherited, and a legendary pleasure dome. Each of these has played a part in making the enchanting, flawed city of our time.

Focusing on the last century and a half, Paris Dreams, Paris Memories makes contemporary Paris understandable. It tells of renewal projects radically transforming neighborhoods and of counter-measures taken to perpetuate the city's historic character and soul. It provides a historically grounded look at the troubled suburbs, barren of monuments and memories, a dumping ground for unwanted industries and people. Further, it tests long-standing characterizations of Paris's uniqueness through comparisons with such rivals as London and Berlin. Paris Dreams, Paris Memories shows that in myriad forms—buildings, monuments, festivities, and artistic portrayals—contemporary Paris gives new life to visions of the city long etched in Parisian imaginations.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Paris—Praised, Modernized, Remembered, Staged, and Loved: Nineteenth-Century Foundations
• 2. The Memory of a Certain Belle Époque (1914–circa 1960): Or How the Turn-of-the-Century Lived on Beyond Its Time
• 3. Postwar Modernizing and the Resistance of Memory (1945–circa 1980)
• 4. New Varieties of a “Nouveau Paris” (1974– . . .)
• 5. Paris in Comparison
• 6. Contemporary Paris—Images, Spirit, Soul, and Sites 186 Conclusion: To Know Paris
• Appendix 1. Unusual and Unexpected Paris—A Sampler
• Appendix 2. Landmark Paris Imagery
• Appendix 3. Modern Paris Timeline
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index