Le portrait hanté. Stratégies figuratives dans l’œuvre de Barbey d’Aurevilly

Abstract

The motif of the painted portrait, widely attested in the 19th century European literature, plays a crucial role in Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly’s works, characterized as a threshold object founded on the triad of absence, desire and phantasm. Like a game of mirrors, the portrait and the text reflect their intrinsic lack in each other, delivering the reader a disturbing face to face with death. A true isotopy of the supernatural chains itself to the portrait which, rather than appearing as the theater of memory supposed to resuscitate the past, appears as a fascinating object able to bewitch the characters. The spectrality which characterizes it transforms it into a haunted portrait filling the text with visions and spectres. In contrast to the democracy of portrait, introduced by photography, the author claims the aristocratic and sacred value of the painted image, conceived as a magical object or even a relic.

Keywords

• portrait
• Barbey d’Aurevilly (Jules-Amédée)
• threshold
• relic
• spectres
• ekphrasis