Modern Languages and Literatures, Department of
Title
Review of Jean-Nicolas Illouz, Le Symbolisme
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
October 2005
As emphases in literary studies have shifted away from structuralist, semiotic, and other modes of reading informed by theory toward historically-oriented esthetic and cultural analysis, we have needed a new examination of Symbolism that would account for its complexities both as a literary and artistic movement and as a “compound moment” in literary and cultural history. Jean-Nicolas Illouz has provided the foundation for such a reexamination. His study is, to my knowledge, the most complete and nuanced overview of the movement that we have, bringing together in a historically informed and carefully researched reading of Symbolism as both the point de rencontre for a multitude of literary, artistic and cultural currents of the French and Belgian fin-de-siècle and also as a decisive moment in the founding of literary Modernism.
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Comments
Published in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, vol. 34, no. 1-2, Fall-Winter 2005-2006. Copyright 2005 University of Nebraska Press. Used by permission.