French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Coste, Walter Pater critique littéraire. The excitement of the literary sense
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
Review published in Acta Fabula : "Au bonheur des mots" by Laurence Roussillon-Constanty.
Bénédicte Coste, Walter Pater critique littéraire. The excitement of the literary sense
Grenoble, ELLUG, coll. "Esthétique et représentation : monde anglophone (1750-1900)", 2010.
EAN 9782843101625
Publisher's overview:
This book forms part of the rediscovery within the French-speaking world of Walter Pater's (1839-1894) critical output. It is devoted to his literary criticism, which has frequently been overlooked despite its richness and the light it sheds on fundamental questions of literary analysis and reflection. Through a reading that places the work in dialogue with psychoanalysis, the author highlights the enduring relevance of Pater's writings.
Pater reformulates established critical concepts to anchor them in a historical and subjective perspective where literature becomes the knotting together of time and the subject. The romance, viewed as a unique, disruptive, and (re)founding event, shatters traditional literary periodization, while style—a notion to which Pater dedicated a seminal text—signals the emergence of a subject properly defined as the subject of literature, exemplified by Flaubert. Along these lines, Pater produced close readings of various literary portraits, which enabled him to reflect on literary impersonality and the position of the enunciating subject within the literary field through stimulating analyses of Charles Lamb and Mérimée.
These portraits also lead him to ponder romanticism, offering an innovative analysis of it through his studies of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Romanticism accompanies and reflects the dawn of an era of subjective division. This division mirrors the societal autonomization analyzed by M. Gauchet; Pater's criticism acknowledges this shift, driving the writer to discover the freedom to dispense with absolute models while confronting the ethical and aesthetic demands of this new relationship with language.
Table of Contents
Table of Abbreviations
Introduction: A Literary Critic?
Chapter I - Literature in Its Time: From Romance to Euphuism
Against Literary History: Romance
From Decadence to Euphuism
Chapter II - « that inward sense of things »
The Question of Style Among the Victorians
« On Style »
Chapter III - The Ironist and the Humorist: Mérimée in the Mirror of Lamb. Impersonality and the Portrait
« the perfection of nobody's style »
« the aroma of a singular, homely sweetness » Charles Lamb
Chapter IV - Two Romantic Poets
« a true flower of the ennuyé » Coleridge
« language, therefore, at its origin » Wordsworth
Conclusion
« an insanity of realism » Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Subject of Literature
Bibliography
This study contributes to the ongoing scholarly rediscovery of Victorian aestheticism and nineteenth-century Anglo-French cultural exchanges within French-speaking literary studies. Walter Pater remains a central figure for understanding the transition from mid-Victorian intellectual currents toward early modern aesthetic sensibilities, engaging deeply with European traditions of philosophical criticism and the subjective turn in art. The volume reflects broader academic interest in how nineteenth-century writers interrogated the boundaries between historical periodization, individual consciousness, and formal innovation across linguistic borders.
Readers interested in nineteenth-century British literature, aesthetic theory, and the history of literary criticism may find this volume relevant to their research. The work examines Pater's engagement with major authors such as Flaubert, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Mérimée, tracing his reformulation of critical concepts through close readings and portraits. It highlights how his texts connect subjectivity, historical perspective, and stylistic analysis without employing promotional language or prescribing methodological tools for contemporary interpretation.