The Muddy Parvenu Reading the Urban Signs of Social Mobility

In dialogue with the cultural history of mud, this article explores the literal and figurative use of this material in literary portraits of parvenus. In the works of Balzac, Flaubert, Mirbeau, Stendhal, and Zola, mud is not the mark of rootedness but the sign of a change of class. From Balzac to Vallès, mud shifts from being a social marker to a metaphor for knowledge, thus opening the way for the character of the “muddy defector” in contemporary literature (Ernaux, Louis).