C. Crépiat, Le Chat Noir exposed : The absurdist spirit behind a 19th Century French cabaret (translated by D. Skinner)

Crépiat Caroline,

Le Chat Noir exposed : The absurdist spirit behind a 19th Century French cabaret,

translated by Doug Skinner

Cover and book design by Norman Conquest.

BLACK SCAT BOOKS (USA), 2021.

EAN13 : 9781735615967.

Trade paper, 182 pp., illustrated, $15.95.

This work of scholarship exposes the liveliest fin-de-siècle bohemian cabaret and journal in Paris.

Le Chat Noir was a playground for painters, writers, poets, pranksters, and musicians, all gleefully demolishing the standards of art and good taste. Caroline Crépiat examines such eccentric personalities as Paul Verlaine, Alphonse Allais, Marie Krysinska, Maurice Mac-Nab, and Charles Cros, and analyzes their treatment of money, women, translation, humor, sex, disease, and scatology, with generous samplings of the original texts. A masterful look at a rich and colorful legend of the avant-garde!

Contents:

Introduction... 7

PART 1: A POLYPHONIC GROUPISM
Chapter One: Group Logic ... 15
Chapter Two: The Reader Has Le Chat Noirs Tongue ... 27
Chapter Three: Fumisme Is Not Just Men’s Business!... 38

PART 2: THE SUBVERSION OF THE SERIOUS DISCOURSE
Chapter Four: Money... 50
Chapter Five: Subverting Translation at the End of the 19th Century: the Examples of Two Chatnoiresque Periodicals, Le Chat Noir ( 1882-1897) and La Vie Drôle (1893-1894)... 60
Chapter Six: “Killing Oneself to Amuse Others,” or the Mechanisms of Suicide for Laughs... 69

PART 3: EMBODYING POETIC ECCENTRICITY
Chapter Seven: Eroticism ... 84
Chapter Eight: Chamber Pots, Enemas, and Cannulas... 96
Chapter Nine: “Let Us Be Fine Chiselers of Turds?”: On the Art of Making Well... 111
Chapter Ten: On the Little Illnesses That We Enjoy... 122
Notes... 137