The Artist as Animal in Nineteenth-Century French Literature traces the evolution of the relationship between artists and animals in fiction from the Second Empire to the fin de siècle. This book examines examples of visual literature, inspired by the struggles of artists such as Edouard Manet and Vincent van Gogh. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt¿s Manette Salomon (1867), Émile Zoläs Therèse Raquin (1867), Jules Laforgue¿s ¿At the Berlin Aquarium¿ (1895) and ¿Impressionism¿ (1883), Octave Mirbeau¿s In the Sky (1892-1893) and Rachilde¿s L¿Animale (1893) depict vanguard painters and performers as being like animals, whose unique vision revolted against stifling traditions. Juxtaposing these literary works with contemporary animal theory (McHugh, Deleuze, Guattari and Derrida), zoo studies (Berger, Rothfels and Lippit) and feminism (Donovan, Adams and Haraway), Claire Nettleton explores the extent to which the nineteenth-century dissolution of the human subject contributed to a radical, modern aesthetic. Utilizing these interdisciplinary methodologies, Nettleton argues that while inducing anxiety regarding traditional humanist structures, the ¿artist-animal,¿ an embodiment of artistic liberation within an urban setting, is, at the same time, a paradigmatic trope of modernity.

Claire Nettleton is Visiting Assistant Professor of French at Pomona College, USA, and editor of Viral Culture: How CRISPR Gene Editing and the Microbiome Transform Humanity and the Humanities (2020), based on a colloquium she organized, and writer of multiple articles and essays on the intersection of animal studies, the history of science, visual art and avant-garde fiction.

1. Introduction

1.1 The Artist as Anarchist

1.2 Historical Framework

1.3 Theoretical Framework: The Modern Animal-The Nineteenth Century Meets Animal Studies?

1.4 Chapter Summary

2. A Caged Animal: The Avant-garde Artist in Edmond and Jules de Goncourt's Manette Salomon

2.1 Contemporary Views of the Visual, Literary Animal

2.2 The Simian Artist

2.3 The Jardin des Plantes: The Artistic Gateway

2.4 Barbizon: The Peasant Artist

3. Buffon Versus the Beast: Taming the Wild Artist in Émile Zola's Thérèse Raquin

3.1 The Bourgeois and the Bull

3.2 Painting with Mud

3.3 The Naturalist Project

Part II: The Decadent Animals of the Third Republic

4. The Decadent Deep Sea: Jules Laforgue's "At the Berlin Aquarium"

4.1 Literary Aquariums

4.2 Through the Eyes of Crustaceans

4.3 Visions of the Orient

5. Said the Spider to the Fly: The Triumph of the Minor in Octave Mirbeau's In the Sky

5.1 The Fly-Poet and the Spider-Artist: Writing and Painting as Animalistic Processes

5.2 Darwin and Decadence: The Splendor of Decay and Horror

5.3 Enter the Void : The Spontaneous Generation of Art

6. Féline-Fatale: The New Woman as Catwoman in Rachilde's L'Animale

6.1 Animale des Lettres

6.2 The Second Species: Felines, Femininity and the Avant-garde

6.3 Feline Frankenstein: Rachilde's Artificial Artist-Animals

6.4 From Balconies to Glass Ceilings: Working Women in Modernity

6.5 Cinematic Cats

6.6 Author Animal

7. Conclusion: Henri Rousseau and Synthetic Naïveté