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Nineteenth Century French Studies 35.1 (2006) 11-12

Foreword

We are pleased to offer this volume of essays to readers of Nineteenth-Century French Studies.

The journal does not, as a general rule, publish special issues. Over the past 34 years, there have been few such stand-alone volumes: several Festschriften, the proceedings of the first Colloquium in Nineteenth-Century French Studies (1975), in 1976 an issue on the "rediscovery" of George Sand, and in 1984 an issue on Flaubert and the Subject. These latter two collections particularly speak to specific moments in our cultural history: the emergence of a new literary feminism, and the debates over theories of textuality.

Times change, certainly. Addressing the relationship between sculpture and literature 1789-1859, the present volume reflects today's attention to historically informed, cross-disciplinary modes of inquiry. Above and beyond the volume's timeliness is of course what it accomplishes: the studies presented here provide authoritative analyses of how the example and practices of sculpture shaped literary and artistic esthetics in France, from the Revolution to the mid-nineteenth century. The complex articulation between l'idéal antique of neoclassicism and le beau moderne of Romanticism is brought forward expertly, deepening our understanding of the entire period and shedding welcome light on those essential but often neglected decades of the Empire and Restoration, 1800-1830.

The essays for this volume were solicited and edited by L. Cassandra Hamrick and Suzanne Nash who alone are responsible for the intellectual direction of the collection and for its exceptional coherence.

It is unusual for a journal issue – special or otherwise – to be so abundantly illustrated. This happy circumstance is due in large measure to the kind generosity of the Département des sculptures, Musée du Louvre, to whom the editors and I are most grateful. Sincere thanks also go to Princeton University for supporting this publication.

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The essays in this collection consider the tensions and generative contradictions underlying the relationship between the literary and the sculptural arts during the move away from classicism in early nineteenth-century France. Much work has been done on the connections between the visual arts and literature during the second half of the century, but critical commentary of this kind which covers the post-revolutionary period through 1859, the year Baudelaire broadened his outlook on the relevance of sculpture for modern times, has been limited. Approaching the problem of the rapport between the sculptural and poetic arts from an interdisciplinary perspective, contributors to this collection offer new insight into the rhetoric and artistic practice of writers and sculptors who would ultimately lay the groundwork for the emergence of a "modern" concept of beauty and poetic creation for a post-revolutionary age.

The collection opens with a group of essays that serve to establish the terms of the artistic debates of the time with respect to the state of the sculptural arts. Gathered under the heading, "Sculpture and Poetic Space Before 1859," these studies focus on various theoretical and technical issues affecting the interaction between sculpture and poetic creation in France during the period from the latter part of the eighteenth century through the mid-nineteenth century. They shed new light on the status of ancient models in the reformulations of artistic practice for a changing contemporary world and on the erosion of the traditional boundaries separating the arts. Theoretical features of the discourse on sculpture are drawn from the critical writings of such influential thinkers as Winckelmann, Lessing, Mme de Staël, Gautier, and Cousin, among others and are shown to find imaginative expression in the most innovative literary and sculptural work of the time.

Part II, "Translating Sculpture into Poetic Form," addresses questions involving the relationship between sculpture and literature more specifically from the point of view of technique and form. Central to the proper understanding of this relationship are the formal tensions between sculptural stasis and poetic élan. At the same time, several essays focus on the socio-political implications resulting from the gradual descent...

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