This is the central site for a long-term project to research, examine, and respond to the radical collective of writers, theorists, architects, and visual artists who operated in Paris between 1829 and 1835 under the names of the Jeunes France & the Bouzingo, and through them to build a critical understanding of French Romanticist subculture through the historical lens of a continuing politically vigilant Anglophone avant-garde.

Joseph Bouchardy

Though virtually forgotten today, Joseph Bouchardy was a co-founder of the Bouzingo group, the first self-declared “avant-garde” collective, blending political radicalism, gothic-horror subculture, experimental literature and art, and the transformation of everyday life. Trained in England as an engraver, back in France he soon turned to playwriting, and produced many blockbuster melodramas full of deception, disguise, double-crossing, violence, and convoluted, labyrinthine plots often taking place in labyrinthine settings--delighted when he was able to construct plots so complex that he even lost track of them himself. See "Translations" for his short story about the theatre, "The Garrick Remedy".

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