Le paysage dans l'oeuvre de Theophile Gautier. (French text);.

Abstract

Critics have neglected Theophile Gautier's talent as a landscapist, having characterized his descriptions as plastic but empty and monotonous. In this dissertation I examine his landscapes in his poetry, travelogues and fiction with respect to the descriptive techniques and attitude toward the pastoral, sublime and fantastic genres. My aim is to suggest that Gautier's landscapes assume various forms and serve not only as settings for his fiction but also perform a function in the narrative process. After summarizing Gautier's aesthetical writings in chapter I, in my chapter on the country-side and the pastoral landscape, I propose a reading of Mademoiselle de Maupin as a "narrative pastoral" whose setting and themes allow the exclusive quest of ideal love and legitimize irresponsible behavior of the characters and of the author. I also explain that when the country-side is not seen through the pastoral perspective, like in Gautier's early poetry and travelogues, it functions mainly as ornament and as an object of contemplation. The chapter on the mountain and the sublime landscape deals with Gautier's Espana and travelogues about Spain and Switzerland. The grandiose mountain sites bring about the "negative sublime" (as defined by Kant), while the modest ones produce the "positive sublime". I point out how these texts are informed by a quest for the sublime, unnoticed by previous critics, in whose eyes Gautier is a writer for whom the world is invariably a source of aesthetic pleasure. My chapter on the city-scape, Paris and the exotic cities, consists of a close reading of Albertus, La Morte amoureuse, Arria Marcella, Avatar, Jettatura and Spirite, which contain supernatural events. I argue that the city is a privileged transition place between the real and the supernatural spheres of the universe. Here the recognizable urban landscape, seen in chiaro-oscuro light, serves to anchor the fantastic event in the physical world and give it credibility and, at the same time, suggest the invisible. In conclusion, I suggest that the use of the descriptive modes--pastoral, sublime and fantastic--reflects an oscillation between Gautier's desire to find the source of his landscapes from the visible world (as expressed in his theoretical writings, our Chapter I) and an aspiration toward the spiritual world, to which he capitulates in his late works.