Travelling in Language and Image: Representing Alterity in French Romantic Fiction, Travel Narrative, Journalism, and Art, 1830--1870

"In his discussion of the importance of theorizing about ""pictures"" and their relationship to ""words,"" W. J. T. Mitchell states that ""the tensions between visual and verbal representations are inseparable from struggles in cultural politics and political culture"" (3). The present study examines the implications of such tensions in the works of nineteenth-century artists and authors who often defined and influenced ""cultural politics"" and reflected ""political culture"" of their time: Delacroix, Fromentin, Sand, and Merimee. The mid-nineteenth-century nascent ""society of the spectacle,"" to use Guy Debord's term, bearing the impact of colonization, political changes, an esthetic/scientific revolution of photography, and commercialization of works of art, represented a fertile ground for discussions on problems and politics of representation. An analysis of visual and discursive representations of alterity in the works by these authors is, therefore, an inquiry into an important cultural phenomenon of French society during the Romantic period. This study suggests that having appropriated the theme of the competition---or collaboration---between images and words, vision and language, visuality and discursivity, the works by Delacroix, Fromentin, Sand, and Merimee represent alterity in a way that is plural, unstable, and at times inconsistent with or even critical of dominant discourses. Their complexity, introspection, and novelistic ""inconclusiveness,"" to use M. Bakhtin's term, indicate that the theme of exoticism and travel did not represent an end in itself, but rather served as a vehicle for discussions on contemporary esthetics, human nature, subjectivity, artistic mission, and the role and place of visual culture in modern society."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

French

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Shvets, Eteri

Contributors dc:contributor

• Talbot, Emile J.

• Literature, Romance

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3111638

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/86268