Ornament, fantasy, and desire in nineteenth-century French literature /

Gordon analyzes texts of Nerval (romanticism), Mallarm'e (symbolism), Huysmans (decadence), and others in order to show the interweaving of the decorative arts and literary stylistics. Ornament is also linked here to the "object of desire" as defined by the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Lacan. Gordon's emphasis on the decorative arts shows, too, through the l'art pour l'art theories of Th'eophile Gautier (the immediate precursor of Parnassian poetry), the mid-century shift from content to form. Illustrations abound of ornamental designs on wallpaper, newspapers, book covers, mirror frames, fans, etc. Harvard's Fogg Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Biblioth`eque Nationale are among the rich sources of these art forms. The wording in some chapter titles (e.g., "lace as a textual Metaphor"; "trills, frills and decorative Frames"; "ornament and Hysteria" alerts one to the intricate, rare focuses of this study. This analysis of the ornamental text brightly meshes art forms, poetry-prose, and psychology, and it is carefully researched and documented with precision; but it is within the reach only of specialists in 19th-century French literature, art history, and psycho-linguistics. J. C. McLaren; University of Delaware