LE PARADOXE DU CRITIQUE D’ART: LA TENSION ENTRE PATHÉTIQUE ET IRONIE DEVANT LES TABLEAUX TOUCHANTS [PARADOX AS THE CRITIQUE OF ART: TENSION BETWEEN PATHOS AND IRONY OF THE “TOUCHING” PAINTINGS]
Journal Title: Studia Litterarum - Year 2016, Vol 1, Issue 3
Abstract
In his Salons, Denis Diderot pays special attention to “touching,” pathetic paintings, and his interest to J.-B. Greuze’s art is evidence to that. When Diderot turns to describe Greuze’s canvases or genre painting of J.-B. Le Prince or P. A. Baudouin, he fnds himself within the framework of sentimental rhetoric related at once to the pathos of the painted scene and to the sensations of the viewer. Diderot’s style becomes heterogeneous and has a peculiar fluidity that often conceals tongue-in-cheek ironic comments. This irony is, in the frst place, a critical instrument of the “salonist” that allows touch upon some of the technical infelicities of the paintings with sly humor. At the same time, not only paintings become the targets of Diderot’s irony; irony manifests itself in the depiction of pathetic paintings when Diderot himself enters the stage. Diderot appears as a “dicephalus” of a kind, a creature with two heads — at once a spectator and an actor. As a spectator, he is fully immersed in the painting, follows the pathos of the scene and describes it with the help of sentimental rhetoric. As an actor, he is capable to distance himself from the painted scene and becomes “insensitive” as the actor whose principles of acting he explicates in “The Paradox of the Actor.” This latter capacity of the contemplator predetermines ironic comments in his descriptions of pathetic paintings.
Authors and Affiliations
Nadège Langbour
THE PLACE OF CARNIVAL IN THE CONTEXT OF MIKHAIL BAKHTIN’S PHILOSOPHY
The role that Mikhail Bakhtin’s book on Rabelais, and the carnival theme more generally, plays in Bakhtin’s philosophy is a perennial concern in Bakhtin studies. Indeed, how would one reconcile such ideas as the carniva...
PORTRAIT DE L’ARTISTE EN SINOLOGUE CAMILO PESSANHA (1867–1926) ET LA CHINE
This essay analyzes the image of China in the work of the Portuguese poet C. Pessanha. Not only it focuses on Pessanha’s place in the history of Portuguese literature but also analyzes such comparativist aspect as the...
FROM THE CULT OF THE “SELF” TO THE ANCESTOR CULT: TRILOGY THE CULT OF THE SELF BY MAURICE BARRÈS
The debut of Maurice Barrès, his trilogy The Cult of the Self immediately won the reader’s attention. In the 1890s, his works evoked increasing interest. His contemporaries read them as a fascinating narrative about the...
A DOCUMENT PAUL AUSTER’S NEW YORK TRILOGY
The article deals with the way a literary work “creates” a document out of itself, on the example of Paul Auster’s novels. A document here is the report of a character, a private detective who is watching another chara...
In this Light Church — Korney is the Hierarch: Recurring Images in the Poetry of Korney Chukovsky and His Contemporaries
The article examines a poetic portrait of Korney Chukovsky. By introducing the figure of the storyteller into several of his tales, the author launched a tradition of representing himself as a fictional character. Read...