The Language of Demolition and Paris’ embellissement, from Voltaire to Baudelaire.

Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between the demolition and beautification of Paris during the 19th century from different literary and philosophical perspectives that allow to situate the interpretation of the city as a metropolitan space marked by self-perception as the capitale of the xixe siècle in different narrative contexts. From early trigonometric plans to the notion of transformation, the image of the city as a privileged and representative space for the transformation of the present appears with different nuances in the works of Voltaire, Verne, Hugo and Baudelaire, not only as a common expressive dimension, but also as a space of conflict of political, aesthetic and ideological position. In this sense, this work intends to trace these inflections, insistences and resistances to the concrete forms of the demolition/institutional beautification relationship.