Book Review

Methods/Theory

When Pierre Monteux taught conducting at Tanglewood, he sat in the back of the pavilion with the score. His most frequent criticism was "I cannot hear the melody." The anecdote fits the book under review: I cannot find the thesis or a leit motif that holds together the many ingredients thrown into this erudite pot-pourri.	1
David Baguley, whose work on Émile Zola is respected, is aware that his is an unconventional book: not history, biography, or literary criticism. The subtitle is offered as an ordering device. "I shall be primarily concerned with more 'extravagant' texts and images: representations and inventions in a variety of media and forms" of "the dynamic process . . . by which the legend or the myth of Napoleon III was elaborately fabricated and vigorously dismantled." "Thus the 'extravaganza' of the title . . . refers both to the events of the Second Empire and to their representation in the texts and images that I have chosen to present" (pp. 3–4).	2
Baguley ranges over the cultural and social history of the Second Empire. Politics are excluded from his work, as are events. His focus is on Louis Napoleon and the court. Baguley summarizes a vast amount of information from contemporary texts and secondary authorities (overwhelmingly of the genus petite histoire). Chapter five on the Bonaparte family is as good as any summary in English. The author's analysis of Victor Hugo's obsessive, tempestuous literary vendetta against the man who exiled him is similarly good. He nails Hugo's "breathless narrative" of the fighting on the boulevard Montmartre (in Histoire d'un crime): "A rather sordid, messy, brutal event . . . is transformed into a Titanic confrontation of epic proportions" (p. 42). His handling of visual sources, especially the portraits of Napoleon and Eugénie, is sensitive, and his chapter on vaudeville is filled with energy and shrewdness. He can write with precision and power, as in his description of the marriage of the imperial couple (p. 233).	. . .