In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviews 265 pornographique”(47). Cette première contribution se penche sur les traits communs, malgré la diversité des textes, qui forment ce que le critique appelle “l’érographie féminine”. En mettant l’accent sur l’importance du dire érotique féminin, Brulotte annonce un aspect étudié dans de nombreux chapitres: la subversion des écrits de femmes. Que cette subversion s’exprime à travers le désir amoureux, l’obscénité, les déviations sexuelles, la vengeance (comme dans le film Baise-moi), la “cruauté” et “la dépravation” d’un “érotisme africain” (289) (comme dans Femme nue, femme noire de Calixthe Beyala) ou à travers la contestation des sociétés patriarcales, en particulier chez des auteures maghrébines,elle a pour but de montrer que la sexualité,l’appropriation du corps et le regard sur l’autre ne relèvent plus exclusivement du dire masculin. Dans l’ensemble, l’étude de l’œuvre de divers auteurs ou cinéastes (d’Annie Ernaux à Catherine Breillat en passant par Assia Djebar, Milan Kundera, Marie-Sissi Labrèche et autres) met en lumière que l’Éros, qu’il soit porté à l’écran ou mis en récit, qu’il soit lié au pathos ou au thanatos, est complexe et toujours multiple. University of Vermont Ching Selao Pouzet-Duzer,Virginie. L’impressionnisme littéraire. Saint-Denis: PU de Vincennes, 2013. ISBN 978-2-84292-365-5. Pp. 349. 24 a. Declaring that, for her, what makes literary impressionism a compelling area of investigation is its existence as a paradigm that contradicts all notions of category, Pouzet-Duzer uses a combination of rhetorical,cultural, sociological,and phenomenological approaches to elucidate the complex interactions among the theories and creations of late nineteenth-century writers (journalists, critics, novelists, poets) and painters whose work exists within the fluid boundaries of this artistic current. Close readings of paintings and texts are juxtaposed with broad overviews, and this continual change in focus, in tandem with the variety of critical approaches, puts the reader in a position to experience the hesitations and fluctuations of what Pouzet-Duzer calls “le morcellement esthétique de toute une époque” (315). The first part of the study examines portraits by Manet and Degas of various writers of their acquaintance.While many critics place these two painters at the margins of impressionism, Pouzet-Duzer justifies her choice on two grounds: 1) the oft-claimed independence of the painters now identified as impressionists, which created a movement with no clearly defined or recognized center, and 2) the historical and theoretical import of Duranty’s 1876 study of “the new painting,” which represented Degas as the ideal impressionist, followed by Mallarmé’s focus on Manet in his study of impressionism later the same year. Much has been written about the friendships among writers and painters of this era and the portraits that ensued, but Pouzet-Duzer’s focus on Manet and Degas brings to the fore the oft-overlooked importance of writers such as Duranty and Astruc. Her analyses of the canvases she calls“portraits des artistes en écrivains”(15) are nuanced and insightful, enhanced by the number, quality, and placement of the reproductions that accompany them. One of the most original and intriguing aspects of these analyses is her contention that the representation of the various writers’hands reflects not just their common métier, but the stylistic differences among them. The second part of the book,“Capturer l’insaisissable: la main et l’œil,” looks at the presence and development of impressionism in literature by focusing on texts by writers as diverse as Zola and Mallarmé. It begins by examining early critical judgments by Brunetière and Lanson, thematic similarities between paintings and texts of the same era, and, via close readings of passages from the Goncourts and Daudet, stylistic similarities and differences between l’écriture artiste and l’impressionnisme littéraire. Pouzet-Duzer also considers the aptness of different genres—novel, interior monologue, poetry, affiches— to impressionist treatment and applies twentieth-century critical notions such as reader response to a variety of late nineteenth-century texts. She concludes that while literary impressionism shares common points with all of the nineteenth-century -ismes, and that...

pdf

Share