French Literature Reviews - 2026

B. Vouilloux, Écritures de fantaisie. Grotesques, arabesques, zigzags et serpentins
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Review in Acta Fabula: La fantaisie a son histoire, by Nicolas Wanlin.

Bernard Vouilloux, Écritures de fantaisie, Grotesques, arabesques, zigzags et serpentins, Paris, Éditions Hermann, coll. "Savoir-Lettres", November 14, 2008, 200p.

• ISBN: 978 2 7056 6793 1
• 25 €

Overview:

From the playful shapes of shifting fire, water, clouds, or pipe smoke, to the zigzag patterns embroidered on fabrics imported from Kashmir or the East, through the winding paths of Parisian arcades, the unstable sketches of writers, or the doodles drawn in the margins of their manuscripts, printed book ornaments, and stylistic arabesques... Everything, for French Romantics, converged to demonstrate the omnipresence of fantaisie.

This is the guiding thread that the author has endeavoured to follow here. Three main lines emerge, intertwining to form a braid: the first shows motifs, images, and figures of popular culture since antiquity feeding into the novel—a genre sordid by vocation; the second shows the gradual abandonment of the models governing dispositio and the rise of conversational genres (parallel to the elevation of the novel), or the emergence of formulas such as Montaigne's essay that infused the polyphony of satirical and comic traditions into discursive genres. Finally, the third line, which forms the thread running through the entire braid, reveals the progressive emancipation of fantaisie, understood as creative imagination, and the corresponding assertion of the primacy of the mind's movement over the monuments of expression.

This book traces the winding path of these threads that weave the complex and captivating history of our literary, artistic, and cultural heritage.

Author:

Bernard Vouilloux, Professor of Modern and Contemporary French Literature at the Université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux 3, is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and of the scientific committee of the journal Perspective (INHA). He has also published thirteen books, including Le Tableau vivant. Phryné, l'orateur et le peintre (Flammarion, 2002), and Julien Gracq. La littérature habitable (Hermann, 2007).

The tradition of the grotesque and the arabesque holds a prominent place in European art history and literary theory, evolving from classical ornamentation into a key concept of Romantic aesthetics. Scholars have long examined how writers and artists sought alternatives to classical constraints, turning instead toward dynamic forms, asymmetry, and the spontaneous play of the imagination. Readers interested in French Romanticism, aesthetic theory, and the interplay between literature and the visual arts may find this volume a relevant addition to their reading.

Bernard Vouilloux examines how motifs from popular culture, conversational genres, and the evolution of discursive writing intertwine within our cultural heritage. The text traces the progressive emancipation of creative imagination and the primacy of the mind over traditional models of expression across various literary and artistic domains. These discussions contribute to a wider understanding of how literary forms and visual practices mutually informed one another during a period of significant artistic transformation.