France has always been considered the home of traditional high culture, but increasingly we are now learning to look at other more popular aspects of modern French cultural life. In this volume, specialists from Britain and France adopt a fresh approach to the study of French culture since 1945 by focussing on the mass media and on a whole range of popular cultural forms. As well as introducing English-speaking readers to such new fields as French radio, television, science fiction and popular song, this volume also highlights how the French themselves responded to the growing importance of the mass media in postwar France.

This volume adopts a varied approach to the study of the "material world" in the French literature, thought and visual arts of the 19th century. Beginning with more purely philosphical definitions of materialism, seen as a topic within the history of ideas, it moves to a broader, more general treatment of materialism - and examines the political, social and cultural repercussions of the emergence of this consumer society.;In particular, the book tackles the question of how things, objects and the material surface of the world - for so long disdained and excluded by a deeply entrenched Neo-classical cultural tradition - came to be fully incorporated into the literature and visual arts of the period. Contributors look not only at the Romantic and Realist transcendence of the Neo-classical heritage of abstraction and idealism, but also adopt modern critical perspectives to analyze central themes such as urbanization, fetishism and the representation of the female body. By the author of "Popular Culture in Modern France: A Study of Cultural Discourse" and co-editor (with N. Hewitt) of "France and the Mass Media".

"Culture" is one of the most frequently used terms in the French vocabulary. It sells not only books, newspapers and magazines, but also consumer products and political parties. But what are the meanings of "culture populaire"? What do the French understand by it and what is its history?;Brian Rigby's study traces changing notions of French popular culture from 1936 - the year of the Popular Front - to the present day. He shows how the post-war democratic project of taking high culture to the people was redefined in the wake of profound social, ideological and cultural change, and how intellectuals and the state came to embrace a pluralist notion of popular culture which recognised the centrality of the mass media. Asking why "culture" remains a fiercely contested term in French society, Rigby considers the work of major French theorists, including Barthes, Bourdieu and Baudrillard. This book should be of interest to students and teachers of French culture and history.