Skip to content

Booksellers & Trade Customers: Sign up for online bulk buying at trade.atlanticbooks.com for wholesale discounts

Booksellers: Create Account on our B2B Portal for wholesale discounts

Decadent Aesthetics and the Acrobat in French Fin de siècle

by Jennifer Forrest
Save 35% Save 35%
Current price ₹3,818.00
Original price ₹5,873.00
Original price ₹5,873.00
Original price ₹5,873.00
(-35%)
₹3,818.00
Current price ₹3,818.00

Imported Edition - Ships in 12-14 Days

Free Shipping in India on orders above Rs. 500

Request Bulk Quantity Quote
+91
Book cover type: Paperback
  • ISBN13: 9781032089928
  • Binding: Paperback
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: Taylor & Francis
  • Publisher Imprint: Routledge
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 228
  • Original Price: GBP 45.99
  • Language: English
  • Edition: N/A
  • Item Weight: 326 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): General

In his discussion of clowns in nineteenth-century French painting from Jean-Léon Gérôme's 1857 La Sortie du bal masqué to Georges Rouault, art historian Francis Haskell wondered why they are so sad. The myth of the sad clown as an allegory for the unappreciated artist found echoes in the work of literary counterparts like Charles Baudelaire and his "Vieux saltimbanque" who seeks in vain a responsive public. For some, the attraction of the acrobatic clown for the creative imagination may have been his ability to embody the plight of the artist: these artistes generally led an ambulatory and uncertain existence. Other artists and writers, however, particularly the Decadents, perceived in the circus acrobat - including the acrobatic clown - a conceptual and performative tool for liberating their points of view from the prison-house of aesthetic convention. If authors' protagonists were themselves sometimes failures, their aesthetic innovations often produced exhilarating artistic triumphs. Among the works examined in this study are the circus posters of Jules Chéret, Thomas Couture's Pierrot and Harlequin paintings, Honoré Daumier's saltimbanque paintings, Edgar Degas's Miss Lala au Cirque Fernando, Édouard Manet's Un bar au Folies-Bergère, the pantomimes of the Hanlon-Lees troupe, and novels, short stories, and poems by Théodore de Banville, Edmond de Goncourt, J. K. Huysmans, Gustave Kahn, Jules Laforgue, Catulle Mendès, Octave Mirbeau, Jean Richepin, Edouard Rod, and Marcel Schwob.

Jennifer Forrest is Professor of French at Texas State University. She is the editor of The Legend Returns and Dies Harder Another Day: Essays on Film Series (McFarland, 2008) and co-editor of Dead Ringers: The Remake in Theory and Practice (SUNY, 2002).

Trusted for over 49 years

Family Owned Company

Secure Payment

All Major Credit Cards/Debit Cards/UPI & More Accepted

New & Authentic Products

India's Largest Distributor

Need Support?

Whatsapp Us