C. Dauphin, D. Poublan, La Lettre mise en scène dans les gravures - Art and Visual Culture

French Literature Reviews - 2026

C. Dauphin, D. Poublan, La Lettre mise en scène dans les gravures
Art and Visual Culture

Cécile Dauphin, Danièle Poublan, La Lettre mise en scène dans les gravures

Presses universitaires de Rennes

Art and Society Series

ISBN: 978-2-7535-0730-2

Price: 20 euros

Number of pages: 240 pages

Publisher's overview:

Whether educational, playful, satirical, or sentimental, engravings depicting letters are examined here in relation to the surrounding texts, the objects bearing them, and the practices they inspired. These images helped popularize letter-writing during a pivotal era marked by the spread of literacy, the opening up of rural areas, and the rise of long-distance communication. Such representations of the letter offer the attentive historian valuable insights into the ordinary course of everyday life.

Table of Contents:

  • The pedagogy of images in letter-writing manuals
  • The stakes of caricature: Gavarni's La Boîte aux lettres
  • The sung letter
  • Postcards: a new form of epistolary practice?
  • Nomadic images

Authors:

Cécile Dauphin is a Research Engineer at CNRS.

Danièle Poublan is a Study Engineer at EHESS.

Epistolary practices and visual culture frequently intersect in modern European history, reflecting broader shifts in literacy and the evolution of communication networks. Visual representations of letters across various media, including manuals, caricatures, and popular prints, participated in shaping social habits and recording the material culture of writing. Scholars of visual arts and cultural history have long examined how images both reflected and fostered changing social norms related to correspondence, education, and domestic life during periods of technological and educational expansion.

Readers interested in the history of communication and visual representations of everyday practices may find this study relevant. The book La Lettre mise en scène dans les gravures by Cécile Dauphin and Danièle Poublan examines engravings depicting letters in relation to surrounding texts, objects, and practices. Whether educational, playful, satirical, or sentimental, these images helped popularize letter-writing during a pivotal era marked by the spread of literacy, the opening up of rural areas, and the rise of long-distance communication.