Paris stock exchange

Paris stock exchange

In Brief

Stephen recalls a scene that Joyce no doubt experienced in Paris: the crush of stockbrokers and visitors at the "Paris stock exchange" or Bourse, now known as Euronext Paris. It is located in the Palais Brongniart, a 19th century copy of the temple of Vespasian and Titus in Rome––probably one reason that he recalls Jewish brokers crowding "loud, uncouth about the temple."

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Gifford observes that Stephen is remembering the interior of the hall, not the entrance. The "steps" on which "the goldskinned men" are standing "under maladroit silk hats" are "the parquet, at the end, a railed-off space which the sworn brokers . . . are alone privileged to enter." He is quoting from Baedeker's 1907 Paris and Its Environs, which also advises visitors that admission is free but "the crush is anything but pleasant."

Thornton argues that the crush of stockbrokers in the temple "may recall the description of the moneychangers in the temple" in all four Christian gospels.

John Hunt 2012
The Bourse sketched in Albert Ellery Berg, The Universal Self-Instructor, 1883. Source: etc.usf.edu/clipart.
The interior: Jules Pelcoq, The Corbeille at the Bourse of Paris, 1873, in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Source: www.1st-art-gallery.com.
Close-up view of the parquet, from an illustration in The Ilustrated London News of June 17, 1854, photographed by seriykotic1970. Source: www.flickr.com/photos/seriykotik.