French Literature Reviews - 2026
Yvonne Saaybi, L'Esthétique du texte malade dans la littérature française fin-de-siècle
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
Review published in Acta Fabula (vol. 27, no. 6): When the text "falls ill"…, by Ciprian Onofrei
Yvonne Saaybi – L'Esthétique du texte malade dans la littérature française fin-de-siècle
Paris, Classiques Garnier, coll. Bibliothèque des lettres modernes, no. 64, Critique series no. 20, 2025
The literature of the second half of the 19th century feeds on pathologies. This study focuses on works belonging to European decadentism, which convey a textual disease affecting the narrative, diegetic, and imaginative structures of the fin-de-siècle text.
The fin-de-siècle period in French literature is frequently associated with the decadent movement, a late 19th-century aesthetic trend characterized by a fascination with artifice, decline, and the morbid. This era often reflected anxieties regarding societal degeneration and the fragility of the human condition through complex, ornate prose styles. Readers interested in the history of medical metaphors in 19th-century aesthetics may find this study relevant to their research.
Yvonne Saaybi’s L'Esthétique du texte malade dans la littérature française fin-de-siècle examines works belonging to European decadentism. The study focuses on how a textual disease affects the narrative, diegetic, and imaginative structures of the fin-de-siècle text. This approach situates the work within broader discussions of formalist criticism, which examines how internal textual elements mirror external cultural tensions, specifically regarding the literature of the second half of the 19th century which often draws upon themes of pathology.