| |
| author |
Kurt Sunderland
| | title |
A Tale of Two Mysteries: A Comparative Study of Les Mystères de Paris and The Mysteries of London
| | abstract |
The texts Les Mystères de Paris by Eugene Sue and The Mysteries of London by George
W.M. Reynolds were massively popular texts in the mid-nineteenth century that engaged with a
growing literate population as a result of mass industrialization in France and England. There are
several things that made these texts increasingly popular among the masses but the most
prominent was the publication format of the texts, which were serialized, overall lowering the
price of printed material. Les Mystères de Paris and The Mysteries of London share a name,
however their content is vastly different, even though the idea for The Mysteries of London was
appropriated by George W.M. Reynolds to sell copies of his publication. The difference between
the two texts can be attributed to the research of Richard Lehan, a cultural historian who writes
about the city as a developing entity that "superimposes itself on the text and vice versa"
ultimately resulting in a text about the city being reflective of the city itself. Therefore, the is no
way that these texts could be about the same thing, but the question remains, what made these
texts so popular, and how did their influence shape pop-culture. In this comparative study, I find
that the influence of Sue and Reynolds through the impact and popularity of their texts came to
define: serialized literature as the popular format, until the book became cheap enough for the
masses; the city novel as a theme for novels that have yet to be written; and finally the texts
influenced the genre-conglomerate of popular-culture that is meant to entertain and engage with
a mass literate population. Les Mystères de Paris and The Mysteries of London are hyper-
referential texts that engage with their contemporary moment so intensely that they point to the
ways that they anticipated popular genres and forms like Baudelaire's Le Spleen de Paris, and
the birth of the sensation novel in the 1860s.
| | school |
The College of Liberal Arts, Drew University
| | degree |
B.A. (2025)
|
| advisor |
Marie-Pascale Pieretti
Wendy Kolmar
|
| full text | KSunderland.pdf |
| |
