Théophile Gautier was one of the best known and most highly respected literary personalities in France in the nineteenth century. Among writers of the time, he counted as friends Victor Hugo, A...
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In the following essay, de Sumichrast examines Gautier's use of beauty, wit, picturesqueness, and realism in his works, particularly as seen in his novel Captain Fracasse. The critic also argue...
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In the excerpt that follows, Feldman discusses Gautier's exploration of dandyism and gender in his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin.
Celle-ci Et Celle-lÀ: Gautier Considers Category
Th...
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In the excerpt below, Schick examines the aesthetics of Gautier's poems, noting that "Gautier's concept of poetry stresses the preeminence of words, of craft and of beauty."...
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In the following essay,Smith compares the narrative processes of Gautier's short fiction to those of the short stories of Poe and of the nineteenth-century German nouvelle.
When Maxime Du Camp ...
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In the following excerpt, Schaffer examines the aesthetic influence of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century French poets on Gautier's poetry.
T.s. Omond Compares Gautier and Hugo:
Next to Hugo...
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In the excerpt below, Richardson maintains that since Gautier "was an artist and a poet, not a conventional journalist or critic . . . he gave journalism a new significance and a new status...
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In this excerpt, George offers a thematic and stylistic analysis of Gautier's short fiction and praises him for raising the standard of the genre.
The petits romantiques, the second generation ...
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In the excerpt that follows, Smith explores the fantastic in Gautier's works, including his use of various phenomena such as impossible events, dreams and hallucinations, and heightened express...
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Here, Lloyd examines the "underlying structures, the associated contrasts and parallels, and the cultural allusions" in Gautier's novel, Mademoiselle de Maupin, contending that tr...
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In the essay that follows, Driscoll discusses Gautier's detailed descriptions in his travelogue, Voyage en Italie, and attempts to distinguish between the two voices of the narrator—the ...
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In the following essay, originally presented in 1988 at the Southeast Conference on Foreign Languages and Literatures at Rollins College, Florida, Hawthorne analyzes the inaccuracies found in the prol...
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In the following excerpt, Sumichrast underscores the importance of beauty in Gautier's short stories.
In the happy youth of Romanticism, Gautier, like many another enthusiast, madly worshipped ...
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In the following excerpt, Andriano explores psychodynamic aspects of Gautier's "Le morte amoureuse, " contending that the female demon, Clarimonde, is a manifestation of Romuald...
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In the following essay, Smith traces the narrative development in Gautier's short fiction.
[In Théophile Gautier, 1890] when Maxime Du Camp affirms that Gautier is less of a romancier than...
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In the following excerpt, George offers a thematic and stylistic analysis of Gautier's short fiction, maintaining that he "stands forth as one of the earliest to construct a formal short...
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Between 1831 and 1865 Gautier published more than a dozen narratives—short stories, novelettes, and novels—which treat different aspects of the quest of an ideal. Taken in their chronolo...
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In the following essay, Smith examines the changing ideal in Gautier's short stories and discusses the autobiographical aspects of his work.
Study of Gautier's narratives shows that the ...
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In the following essay, Cockerham discounts the notion that Gautier relied on drugs or alcohol for creative inspiration.
"I am like the hippopotamus" [Gautier wrote in Poésies compl...
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Grant is an American educator and critic. In the following excerpt, he discusses the defining characteristics of Gautier's "Oriental" stories, asserting that they stem from a ...
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In the following essay, Gordon investigates the influence of nineteenth-century psychiatric theories on Gautier's short fiction.
The title of my essay might have been: "Qu'est-ce ...
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In the following essay, Crichfield explores how the scientific acceptance of optical illusion propelled its use as a literary device in Gautier's "Arria Marcella. "
Recent scholar...
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In the following essay, Van Eerde explores the meaning of the inclusion of the color red at the end of Gautier's otherwise all-white poem and finds that the color communicates emotional need.
M...
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In the following essay, Schick explores the poem, "Coquetterie posthume," and discusses how its seemingly paradoxical conjunction of seduction and death can illuminate other aspects of G...
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In the following essay, Vest explores Gautier's use of images of nailing in "Albertus."
To dismiss "Albertus" as a gratuitous, puerile fantasy or as a frenetic exerc...
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In the following essay, Alsip compares the poetic imagery of Théophile de Viau and Gautier, concluding that while Gautier may have been influenced by the earlier poet's imagery, he was n...
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In the following essay, Burnett interprets Gautier's Comédie as a heroic confrontation with mortality and a struggle for sexual self-knowledge and artistic wholeness.
The decade of the 1...
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In the following essay, Nurnberg contrasts poems by Gautier and Alfred de Musset with similar subject matter—the recounting of a bittersweet, chance encounter with idealized beauty—in or...
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In the following essay, Burnett describes the pattern of artistic self-destruction—creation of an ideal, desire for that ideal, and subsequent destruction—prevalent in many of Gautier...
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In the following essay, Burnett discusses the evolving role of the poem-as-architecture in Gautier's La comédie de la mort
In 1838 Théophile Gautier published a collection of poet...
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In the following essay, Bishop discusses the use of a complex, romantic irony which Gautier employed for humorous effect and for the fuller treatment of serious themes.
No French author has better epi...
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In the following essay, Schick explores the ironic and seductive effects of Albertus's intratextual weaving.
Theophile Gautier's talent as a storyteller is much more readily appreciated ...
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In the following essay, Lien examines the role of the prefatory poem in reconciling Gautier's aesthetic of emotional detachment with an impulse toward sentiment in La comédie de la mort,...
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The Beautiful Vampire - A tale of sin and atonement?
In Theophile Gautier's The Beautiful Vampire, he is very subtle in presenting the sins committed. Although all of the characters in this story ...
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