89

French society during the July Monarchy appeared to many contemporary observers as blurred and opaque. This perception gave rise to an increasing number of writings aiming to decipher social complexity, to capture society into a text. This paper sheds light on the convergence between these different forms of description and decoding. From novels by Balzac or by Paul de Kock to “tableaux de mœurs” in the style of Les Français peints par eux-mêmes, or social surveys about pauperism commissioned the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques, all these texts belong to a common descriptive regime whereby the urge to decipher social signs is combined to an attempt to map the reality into “types” in order to present a comprehensive “panoramic” view of society. This makes it possible to define, around 1840, a “panoramic moment” where literature was the medium of choice for producing knowledge and discourse about society.