The First Illustrated Edition of L’Assommoir (Marpon-Flammarion, 1878): Writing and Drawing the Time of Industrial Capitalism
Abstract
This essay is divided into three sections. The aim of the first section is to rethink, from a theoretical perspective, the role of images in the first French illustrated edition of Émile Zola’s masterpiece L’Assommoir. The second section provides a close reading of the five most experimental illustrations, and their relation to the aesthetics of Impressionism is explored. The third and last section aims at exploring a theoretical problem: if one of the main themes of both L’Assommoir and the ‘impressionist’ illustrations is time as it began to be understood and experienced under industrial capitalism, how do literature and illustration, respectively, deal with such an elusive category?
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