Winner of the SCMLA 2017 Book Award
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, French visual artists began incorporating Japanese forms into their work. The style, known asJaponisme, spanned the arts.
Identifying a general critical move from a literal to a more metaphoric understanding and presentation ofJaponisme, Pamela A. Genova applies a theory of "aesthetic translation" to a broad response to Japanese aesthetics within French culture. She crosses the borders of genre, field, and form to explore the relationship of Japanese visual art to French prose writing of the mid- to late 1800s.Writing Japonismefocuses on the work of Edmond de Goncourt, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Émile Zola, and Stéphane Mallarmé as they witnessed, incorporated, and participated in an unprecedented cultural exchange between France and Japan, as both creators and critics. Genova’s original research opens new perspectives on a fertile and influential period of intercultural dynamics.
Writing Japonismefocuses on the work of Edmond de Goncourt, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Émile Zola, and Stéphane Mallarmé as they witnessed, incorporated, and participated in an unprecedented cultural exchange between France and Japan, as both creators and critics. Genova’s original research opens new perspectives on a fertile and influential period of intercultural dynamics.
"InWriting JaponismePamela Genova provides stunning new insights about the nineteenth-century French reception of Japanese culture. A model of interart poetics, the book engages with Japonisme not just as a visual trope, but as a creative and critical model that bridges the visual and the discursive through the concept of 'aesthetic translation.' This erudite and engaging book belongs on the shelf of all those interested in Japonisme, nineteenth-century French studies, and trl1
![Writing Japonisme: Aesthetic Translation in Nineteenth-Century French Prose [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/5/6/4/2_5251164.jpg "Writing Japonisme: Aesthetic Translation in Nineteenth-Century French Prose [Paperback]")