Sima Godfrey discusses her study of high fashion and fashionability in mid-nineteenth-century French literature. In the Second Empire, which was a time of unstable social structure as the middle class strengthened, the culture of and interest in fashion were reflected and expressed in literature, especially by Balzac and Flaubert, and in a popular magazine published by Mallarmé.
At the time of this interview, Godfrey, a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1987-88), was professor of French at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
