The Flàneur: Dandy of 19th Century Paris with Sylvia Sagona

Forever associated with the Impressionist streetscapes of Paris, the flàneur, man of leisure, connoisseur of the boulevards and urban explorer, owes much to the unlikely popularity of all things English in Second Empire Paris.

Influenced by the influential Regency figure of fashion, George 'Beau' Brummell (1778 1840), the flàneur, always male, expressed the angst and loneliness of the modern city so eloquently expressed in the poetry of Charles Baudelaire.

Sylvia Sagona completed her post graduate studies of a Maitrise ès Lettres at the University of Aix en Provence where she lived and lectured at the university of Aix-Marseilles before taking up a lectureship in the Department of French and Italian studies at the University of Melbourne. She has taught in Paris on 19th century art and literature in partnership with the French Centre d' Etudes pédagogiques de Sèvres, and in Rome with the Università Roma 2 on how the Popes used the city layout for Christian propaganda.