Physiologies

Too often dismissed as shallow petit-bourgeois ephemera, the small books in the Physiologie genre, dedicated to recording the apparently trivial aspects of life in the July Monarchy, are in fact a precious source for the study of the society, politics, and culture of this period. They remain a sprightly and witty testimony to the vitality of literary journalism in the Paris of the 1840s, and particularly of the Charivari group of writers and illustrators. In the late 1820s and throughout the 1830s various works appeared entitled Physiologie de …, the most notable being Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du goût (1826) and Balzac's Physiologie du mariage (1830). The grandiose, pseudo-scientific subtitles of these two works set the tone for the genre, which was to explode with 122 titles in the years 1840-2. Underlying all the Physiologies was the sense that modern city life had become both infinitely interesting and mysterious, as well as decidedly ridiculous and bathetic.

[Brian Rigby]