Murder in Parisian Streets

Book excerpt: "In Murder in Parisian Streets Thomas Cragin provides an in-depth study of the production, sale, and content of the canards. He demonstrates their significance to nineteenth-century culture, even their role in determining the emerging tabloid's success. Cragin explores the incremental creation of textual meaning in the canards' authorship, production, distribution, and consumption. He exposes the power of oral traditions as well as modern marketing at work upon this popular news literature. The canards challenge our assumptions about the nineteenth century's revolution in print and reorient our understanding of cultural creation through textual construction."--Jacket.