WEEK SIX: Belief in Europe

All students should prepare answers to these questions. Students whose last names begin with A-H must submit written answers to these questions at the beginning of their discussion class on 17-18 February. (Other students may submit written answers for extra credit.) Written answers should be 1.5-2 pages single spaced (3-4 pages, double spaced) in an 11- or 12-point font, with standard sized margins. Written answers will be returned in the following week's discussion class. No written work will be accepted after a student's discussion class (no exceptions will be made to this rule).

Dublin Review review of Charles Kemen, The Marpingen Apparitions. About the periodical: founded in 1836 with the support of the prominent Irish political leader, Daniel O'Connell (biography here), the Dublin Review was the leading publication for Catholics in nineteenth-century Great Britain. Kemen's account of Marpingen was only one of many published in the late 1870s (the most extensive descriptions are available only in German though a fast "google books" search reveals that the episode was discussed in most of the Christian press).
1a. What is the tone of this review? What do you think is the reviewer's attitude toward the events in Marpingen? Does he present anyone or anythingin a particularly good or bad light?
1b. As you know from lecture, Marpingen was only one of several places in nineteenth-century Europe where people reported having seen the Virgin Mary. How do you account for this phenomenon? How does it relate to other developments we have studied?

Emile Zola, The Ladies' Paradise (1883). About the author and text: Au bonheur des dames is the eleventh in a series of twenty novels (the "Rougon-Macquart" series) that Zola wrote about France in the 1850s-1860s. Zola is usually classified as a "naturalist," meaning that he tried to use literature to depict human nature (even its least appealing aspects). Zola famously did extensive research before writing each of these books; The Ladies' Paradise is based on Auguste Hériot founding the "Grands Magasins du Louvre" (Great Shops at the Louvre) in 1855.
2a. To what other sorts of institutions does Zola implicitly compare the department store (that is, is it "like" a factory or a railroad or a family or...)? What do you think is the significance of his comparisons and analogies?
2b. Like Dickens' "The Pawnbroker's Shop," this selection is set in an urban retail context, where goods and money change hands. But the two stores are obviously very different. What does a comparison of these two texts tell you about nineteenth-century European cities?
2c. Historians sometimes use the work of realist or naturalist writers--such as Dickens or Zola--as primary-source evidence depicting life in the past. Why do historians need to be careful in how they use such texts?