Routledge - The Gamin de Paris in Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture

Explore the evolution of the Parisian urchin through this scholarly study from Routledge Research in Art History. This book examines how the figure of the gamin de Paris became a central part of the collective social imaginary during the nineteenth century. It traces the visual and literary paradigms established by iconic works such as Eugene Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People (1830) and Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables (1862). Readers will learn how images of the boy at the barricades functioned as cultural and psychic sites of memory. The text connects these visual representations to recurring political revolutions in 1830, 1832, 1848, and 1871. It also looks at how these figures related to masculine, bourgeois identity constructions. This work is an essential resource for those studying art history, French visual culture, and the social history of nineteenth-century Paris.