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Article: Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Siecle France.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- The Historian
- Article date:
- January 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Siecle France. By Mary Louise Roberts. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. xii, 353. $35.00.)
Fin de siecle Europe has taken a linguistic turn since Carl Schorske's Fin de Siecle Vienna (1981). In lieu of organic metaphors describing the demise of classical liberalism--especially "decay," "decadence," and "decline"--recent historians, particularly of modern France, use more precise terms. Robert Nye, for example, has analyzed the end-of-century climacteric as a medical concept, one that contemporaries used to explain the national decline associated with rising rates of madness and crime; "moral ...