L'Art De La Description Et Du Portrait Chez Manette Salomon Des FrèRes Goncourt.

Author

Barbara Joan Goodman

Publication Date

7-14-1970

Abstract

The death of Honoré de Balzac in 1850 left a void in the production of masterpieces of the French novel. During the next decade, the lack of a dominant literary school, with precise rules, afforded to a great variety of authors a period of experimentation toward the establishment of a new direction for the novel.

The cooperative creation of Jules and Edmond de Goncourt emerged from this indecisive period. Throughout the ten years, the two brothers dabbled in various media of expression--painting, history, art criticism, drama-but their primary importance resides in their innovations in the novel. Manette Salomon, published in 1867 is perhaps the best illustration of the esthetic system of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt.

In imitation of the caricaturist Gavarni, the Goncourt brothers strove to create· a physiognomy of the nineteenth century. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt took their documentation from the daily life of the lower classes of Parisian society. Thus, the emphasis in the novel shifted from the narration of the actions of characters to a description of the characters themselves as well as of their environment.

Almost exclusively composed of a series of independent tableaux, Manette Salomon reveals a highly developed descriptive art. Through the use of color of neologisms and of unusual syntactic patterns, the Goncourt brothers succeeded in rendering the feeling evoked by the object described. Thus, their descriptions stimulate the reader’s affective responses before acting upon his intellect—the basic principle of Impressionistic writing.

The importance of the Goncourt brothers in the development of the French novel is an accepted act among literacy historians. Their creation of a personal language, “écriture artiste” and their transposition of art to prose has directly or indirectly influenced the French literature of the later of the nineteenth century as well as that of the beginning of the twentieth century.

Document Type

Thesis

Language

French

Degree Name

Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies

Level of Degree

Masters

Department Name

Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures

First Committee Member (Chair)

Claude Marie Bork

Second Committee Member

Jack Kolbert

Third Committee Member

Ernest Truett Book

Recommended Citation

Goodman, Barbara Joan. "L'Art De La Description Et Du Portrait Chez Manette Salomon Des FrèRes Goncourt.." (1970). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/fll_etds/160