French Literature Reviews - 2026
Writing Painting
Other Literary Studies
Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal
Writing Painting
between the 18th and 19th Centuries
Collection Révolutions et Romantismes, No. 4
Proceedings of the conference of the Centre de Recherches Révolutionnaires et Romantiques
Université Blaise-Pascal (Clermont-Ferrand, October 24–26, 2001)
Edited and introduced by Pascale Auraix-Jonchière
This book explores, across various genres (literary fiction, correspondence, diaries, critical and historical texts, etc.), allusions to painting and the description of paintings as a mode of representation, a mediated discourse on the self, writing, and History, among other themes.
Our premise is that painting undergoes a double appropriation: metamorphosed by the writing that claims it, it serves as a substitute for a more transparent discourse to facilitate a poetic (in speaking of painting, I am actually speaking of my own writing), political, and existential reflection.
MAY 2003 - 496 pages
ISBN 2-84516-194-8
28
Available in bookstores
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Art Criticism and Description: Writing on Painting
Chapter 1: The Critical Instance
DÉMORIS René: The Stakes of Art Criticism at its Inception: La Font de Saint-Yenne's Réflexions (1747)
FERRAN Florence: "A medicine whose bitterness nothing can correct...": Portrait of the Art Critic as a Charlatan in the 1780s
Chapter 2: The Scopic Dimension
MANNA Éveline Discourse Against Painting and the Questioning of Perception at the Turn of the XVIIIe Century
LOJKINE Stéphane: Herse's Leg. Image Writing and Scopic Crystallization in Diderot's Salons
TANE Benoît: Discourse, Painting, and Engraving in the Illustrated Edition of Rétif de la Bretonne's Le Paysan perverti (1782): From Exhibition to Impression
Chapter 3: The Relevance of Art Description
CUSSINET Marie-France: On M. Lenepveu's Paintings at the Angers Theatre
GUILLOT Isabelle: Ekphrasis in Goethe's The Paintings of Philostratus
II. FROM ART TRANSPOSITION TO ART POETICA: DE-PAINTING PAINTING
Chapter 1: Transpositions
BROGNIEZ Laurence: Art Transposition in Belgium: The Massacre of the Innocents as Seen by Maurice Maeterlinck and Eugène Demolder
DESBUISSONS Frédérique: Depicted Painting / Depicted Scene: Gustave Courbet's and Francis Wey's The Stone Breakers
GRALL Catherine: "Paintings would transform into poems...": On a Pictorial Reference in Hoffmann and Eichendorff
LASCAR Alex: Eugène Sue as a Novelist: The Pictorial Temptation
SPANDONIS Sophie: From "Paraphrase" to "Hallucination": Reflections on Ekphrasis in Jean Lorrain
Chapter 2: Arts Poetica
PICKERING Robert: Baudelaire, the Salons: Artistic Exegesis and Poetic Transfer
BERTHIER Patrick: Balzac as Portraitist: The Pictorial Framing of the Problem
BRIX Michel: Frenhofer and the Masterpieces That Remain Unknown
GIRAUD Laurent: Stendhal, Biographer of Leonardo da Vinci
CHABANNE Marie-Pierre: The History of Painting in Italy: Towards an Archaeology of Stendhalian Aesthetics
III. IN QUEST OF KNOWLEDGE: RECLAIMING PAINTING
Chapter 1: Deciphering the World
GROUIX Pierre: I would like the canvases of all the painters in the world: Remarks on Zola as an Art Critic
WANLIN Nicolas: Pictorial Aesthetics and Nostalgia: The Disappearance of Painting in Aloysius Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit
ANTOLINI-DUMAS Tatiana: Paradoxes and Subjectivity: The Pictorial Itinerary of Quinet and Custine in Spain
SURLAPIERRE Nicolas: The System of Reality and Strategies of Egotism in Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's
Of Justice in the Revolution and in the Church
GINÉ-JANER Marta: Discourse and Painting in Mérimée's The Souls of Purgatory
Chapter 2: Problems of Self-Representation
BOUGUERRA Mohamed Ridha: Writing and Painting in Delacroix's Journal, or the Painter's Mirror
WRIGHT Barbara: The Mirror and the Mask in Eugène Fromentin's Self-Representation
The essays collected here examine how painting undergoes a double appropriation, serving as a substitute for a more transparent discourse to facilitate poetic, political, and existential reflection. Readers interested in the history of aesthetics or the development of 18th- and 19th-century literature may find this exploration of the interplay between pictorial aesthetics and narrative structure relevant to their research.