 | 👤 Théophile Gautier (1811-72), French poet |
Published May 2006
The Fantastic in France and Russia in the Nineteenth Century: In Pursuit of Hesitation
Claire Whitehead
Studies In Comparative Literature 10
- ‘This recent volume from the Legenda imprint maintains the high standards of production and academic excellence in the field of comparative literature that readers have come to expect from the marque.’ — Leon Burnett, Slavonic and East European Review 86.4, 2008, 707-09 (full text online)
- ‘Most of all benefits through its comparative analyses of chosen texts; this not only makes obvious the "pan-European" context in which the fantastic flourished during the nineteenth century but will, it is to be hoped, inspire others to tinker further with some of the concepts applied here to the fantastic, especially in relation to other examples of Gothic fiction.’ — Slobodan Sugur, Modern Language Review 104.3, 2009, 824-25 (full text online)
- ‘This is a very readable work, which constitutes a valuable complement to Todorov's 1970 "Introduction à la littérature fantastique."’ — Forum for Modern Language Studies 235)
- ‘Essential reading for scholars of the fantastic; I also recommend it to instructors, who can use Whitehead's readings of these classic texts to astound their students by revealing the way that language works to produce the thrills of the genre.’ — Lynn Patyk, Russian Review 68.1, May 2009, 129-30
Published November 2007
Théophile Gautier, Orator to the Artists: Art Journalism of the Second Republic
James Kearns
Legenda (General Series)
- ‘In this first ever study of all of Théophile Gautier’s art criticism produced during the Second Republic, James Kearns brings us a much-needed reassessment of the art critic’s role in the history of French art... this is a highly accomplished study, which should be essential reading both for the scholar researching the Salon during this period and for the Gautier specialist. The material is well structured and the writing style engaging, making it equally accessible to the student or more seasoned researcher.’ — Catherine Hewitt, French Studies 64.2, April 2010
- ‘This highly informed and informative study exposes a breadth of sources that should serve to prompt new enquiries in Gautier scholarship... Analyses [in this book] suggest the role this fine study may play in releasing Gautier’s art journalism ‘from the simplistic art-for-art’s-sake commonplaces to which it has been for so long reduced’ and in reasserting Gautier’s importance in the visual culture of nineteenth-century France.’ — Greg Kerr, Modern Language Review 105.2, 2010, 567-68 (full text online)
- ‘Focusing on the period of the Second Republic which spans the 1848 Revolution and the 1851 coup d’état, this meticulously researched and engaging study follows Gautier’s reactions to developments in the organisation of the salon and to the artists themselves through a series of 49 articles published in La Presse... Gautier emerges in Kearns’s study not only as a prolific and idiosyncratic critic but also as one who challenges the label of 'art for art’s sake', embracing an overtly Republican artistic agenda.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.2, 2010, 247
Published December 2012
Dream Cities: Utopia and Prose by Poets in Nineteenth-Century France
Greg Kerr
Legenda (General Series)
- ‘This is a valuable and ambitious study which operates deftly on the edge of cultural and intellectual history and successfully inflects our understanding of the emergence, and the evolution, of a literary form.’ — Claire White, Journal of European Studies 43, 2013, 378-79
- ‘An ambitious inquiry into key structural and thematic aspects of poetic prose in nineteenth-century France, Greg Kerr’s Dream Cities combines a diverse array of primary sources and theoretical frameworks... Of particular interest in this book is Kerr’s attention to textual innovations pursued by several Saint-Simonian writers, including Barthélémy-Prosper Enfantin, Michel Chevalier, Charles Duveyrier, and Emile Barrault.’ — Suzanne F. Braswell, H-France 13, November 2013, 175
- ‘In this study Greg Kerr intriguingly argues that the contemporaneous development of the prose poem is closely associated with utopian dreaming, as if Baudelaire’s dream of a prose poétique, sufficiently supple and abrupt to adapt itself to the ‘mouvements lyriques de l’âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience’ ... could alone do justice to these new social and physical structures.’ — Rosemary Lloyd, French Studies 68.1, January 2014, 118
- ‘This work is a fascinating study of the ways in which the modern metropolis altered not only the content, but also the formal innovations of several nineteenth-century French writers... An innovative and valuable contribution to both urban and literary studies.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.1, January 2014, 128
- ‘A significant contribution to our understanding of the ways that utopian and journalistic writing can be juxtaposed alongside the prose poem and other visual and architectural projections of urban futurity. Kerr convincingly shows how this set of disparate phenomena collectively reflects the dynamic, uncertain, and ultimately unfulfilled desires of a society en quête de forme.’ — Daniel Sipe, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 43.1-2, 2014
- ‘Investigations of the ‘poème en prose’ as a hybrid form are multiple, and Kerr’s arguments add to them. His aims, however, are distinctive. Rather than seek to explain such hybridity by tracing the form’s identity or development within a specific historical tradition, he presents a more fluid and open kind of contextualization, in which new awareness of unfamiliar utopian rhetoric contributes to our understanding of the urban prose poem. Notions of hybridity are thereby extended and enriched.’ — Richard Hobbs, Modern Language Review 110.3, July 2015, 870-71 (full text online)