ABSTRACT
The writers and artists of the 1850s and 1860s who paused to contemplate the space outside the fortifications conveyed some sense of its metaphorical potential but rarely focused on the zone as a distinct entity. This began to change in the second half of 1870, when the areas military function was activated in response to the Prussian siege of Paris. Alphonse Daudet used the demolitions in the zone as a metaphor for decline, but one that emphasised urban rather than specifically political problems. The physical and supposed moral squalor of the zone could be used as a metaphor to attack any political system. The zone attracted a number of avant-garde painters and inspired a refined literary style which echoed the prose poems of Baudelaire while announcing the emergence of the Decadent movement. The Prussian siege of Paris had wrought terrible suffering on the city's inhabitants and led to the brief but disastrous experiment of the Paris Commune.
