French Literature Reviews - 2026
Y. Kor, D. Plassard & C. Saminadayar-Perrin (eds.), Littérature monstre
Other Literary Studies
A Teratology of Art and Society
edited by Yanna KOR, Didier PLASSARD & Corinne SAMINADAYAR-PERRIN
The monster haunts the modern imagination, from Quasimodo to Ubu, and from The Man Who Laughs to the dwarf Philippo, reduced to a mere head in Raymond Roussel's Impressions of Africa. Spanning centuries, Romantic grotesquery indeed paved the way for the most striking transformations.
Between 1848 and 1914, natural history grew fascinated by the genesis of monsters; fairground audiences marveled at deformed or mutilated bodies; physicians and psychosociologists, through a broad lens of teratology, voiced their obsession with the degeneration of peoples and civilizations.
Literature and theater eagerly embraced this figure of the monstrous, wielding their own symbolic tools. Here, the monstrous being lends its flesh to the aberrations of the body politic and society. Elsewhere, it embodies psychological anomalies and moral deviance, or serves as a reflection of the "monstrous soul" described by Rimbaud.
The aesthetics of these works, shaped by various twists and turns, could not escape this fate. Language, style, and composition are all subverted. Thus emerges, on the page as well as on the stage, a monstrous literature in every sense of the word.
Yanna KOR holds a PhD from Paul-Valéry University Montpellier 3 and is a specialist in Alfred Jarry and 19th-century French puppet theater.
Didier PLASSARD is Professor of Theater Studies at Paul-Valéry University Montpellier 3 and Principal Investigator for the PuppetPlays project, funded by the European Research Council.
Corinne SAMINADAYAR-PERRIN is Professor at Paul-Valéry University Montpellier 3; her scholarly work focuses on Jules Vallès, journalistic discourse, and the representation of society in 19th-century literature.
The figure of the monster has long occupied a place in the European cultural imagination, particularly within the Romantic tradition and its subsequent developments. By the mid-19th century, the intersection of natural history, emerging psychological sciences, and popular spectacle fostered a fascination with physical and moral deformity. This volume situates the literary and theatrical fascination with monstrosity within this broader intellectual climate, where the deformed body served as a metaphor for social decay and political instability. Readers interested in the evolution of the grotesque in French literature may find this collection of essays relevant.
Between 1848 and 1914, the aesthetic of the monstrous permeated both the thematic content and the formal structure of creative works. Authors and playwrights utilized the monstrous to mirror psychological anomalies and moral deviance, subverting traditional language, style, and composition. This inquiry into the representation of the body politic through the lens of teratology reflects a period where the boundaries between scientific observation and artistic expression were frequently blurred, leading to a reconfiguration of narrative and dramatic norms.