SOURCE: "The Politics of Irony and Alienation: A Study of Jules Vallés' Le Bachelier," in Romance Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 1, February, 1987, pp. 27-33.

In the following essay, Lloyd applies Karl Marx's notion of alienation to illuminate the character Jacques Vingtras 's troubled relationship to both work and workers, emphasizing Vallès's use of irony as a textual representation of alienation.

As in all previous history, whoever emerges as victor still participates in that triumph in which today's rulers march over the prostrate bodies of their victims. As is customary, the spoils are born aloft in that triumphal parade. These are generally called the cultural heritage… . They owe their existence, not merely to the toil of the great creators who have produced them, but equally to the anonymous forced labor of the latters' contemporaries. There has never been a document of culture which was not at one and the...