- 212 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Balzac, Grandville, and the Rise of Book Illustration
About This Book
Examining how the rise of book illustration affected the historic hegemony of the word, Keri Yousif explores the complex literary and artistic relationship between the novelist HonorĂ© de Balzac and the illustrator J. J. Grandville during the French July Monarchy (1830-1848). Both collaborators and rivals, these towering figures struggled for dominance in the Parisian book trade at the height of the Romantic revolution and its immediate aftermath. Both men were social portraitists who collaborated on the influential encyclopedic portrayal of nineteenth-century society, Les Français peints par eux-mĂȘmes. However, their collaboration soon turned competitive with Grandville's publication of ScĂšnes de la vie privĂ©e et publique des animaux, a visual parody of Balzac's ScĂšnes de la vie privĂ©e. Yousif investigates Balzac's and Grandville's individual and joint artistic productions in terms of the larger economic and aesthetic struggles within the nineteenth-century arena of cultural production, showing how writers were forced to position themselves both in terms of the established literary hierarchy and in relation to the rapidly advancing image. As Yousif shows, the industrialization of the illustrated book spawned a triadic relationship between publisher, writer, and illustrator that transformed the book from a product of individual genius to a cooperative and commercial affair. Her study represents a significant contribution to our understanding of literature, art, and their interactions in a new marketplace for publication during the fraught transition from Romanticism to Realism.
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Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Out of Bounds: Book Illustration in France, 1830â1848
- 1 The Frames of Competition: Balzac, Grandville, and Caricature
- 2 Caging the Writer: Les scÚnes de la vie privée et publique des animaux
- 3 Penning the Illustrator: Caricature and Illustration in La comédie humaine
- 4 The Illustrator Unbound: Grandvilleâs Un autre monde
- Conclusion: Cat and Mouse
- Bibliography
- Index