Nana

Reading notes

• The Sinner from Toledo §52 Nana

  The title character of Emile Zola's 1880 novel Nana, a courtesan whose name had already become, in the same year the novel appeared, a byword for sexual license.

• To M. V. Kiseleva, 13 December 1886. Moscow. §8 In Petersburg I am becoming fashionable, like Nana

  Chekhov compares his sudden, uncomfortable social celebrity in Petersburg to the notoriety of Nana, the courtesan heroine of Emile Zola's 1880 novel of the same name, whose name had become in Russia (as in France) a byword for scandalous, of-the-moment fame -- a self-deprecating way of saying his popularity feels less like literary respect than a fad.

• To the Chekhovs, 1891. Vienna. §3 railway Nana

  A comparison to the title character of Zola's 1880 novel \emph{Nana}, whose name was already, by 1891, a byword for luxurious, faintly scandalous glamour; Chekhov jokes that riding in the sumptuous international sleeping car made him feel as decadently pampered as Zola's courtesan heroine. See also his identical self-comparison to Nana's Petersburg-fashionable notoriety in, \S8.

• In the American Style §6 \emph{Nana}

  Emile Zola's 1880 novel about a Parisian courtesan, whose scandalous reputation made it, in the year of its publication, an obvious title for a proper household to forbid.

• A Guide for Those Wishing to Marry. (Secret) §5 Nana

  The courtesan heroine of Emile Zola's 1880 novel "Nana," whose title character's name had already become, in the years after its publication, a byword for sexual license.