The present paper aims to explore the topic of the vocation of a courtesan in the 19th-century France, by analyzing memoirs of tree demi-mondaines of the time: Céleste Mogador, Cora Pearl and Rigolboche. Does such a vocation exist ? If yes, how can we define this notion ? The first part tries to show that prostitution isn’t chosen by women because of the their inclination to debauchery, but is the result of the failed education and parental abandonment. The second part focuses on the importance of independence in the courtesan’s life, as a part of their vocation, and the manner to gain it.

It would be difficult to imagine a Realistic or Naturalistic novel without the character of a servant, the most frequently a female one. Actually, in the 19th century, the servant becomes much more visible and important, raising sometimes into the position of the main character. The Goncourt’s Herminie Lacerteux, Zola’s The Kill and Maupassants’s A Woman’s Life depict three servants whose destiny is strictly connected to their mistress’ life ; they all have a huge influence on what becomes of the three ladies. The paper aims to examine the three models of interaction of servants and their mistresses so as to prove the importance of the servant in the « human document » created by the writers.

The present paper focuses on the diary of the French painter Félix Ziem (1821-1911) and inquires the destiny of the painter emerging from his writings. Basing on the theories of diary writing (B. Didier, A. Girard, J. Lis), it shows how the artist represents his profession. The analyses convey that three elements are necessary for Félix Ziem to fulfill the destiny of the painter: hard work, dreamy contemplation of nature and travels. Those elements are described in detail in the three consecutive parts of the paper. The conclusions display a self-confident artist, influenced by Romantic aesthetics, who consciously constructs in his diary a testimony of his life as an example of painter’s destiny.

The translation of La Bible d’Amiens and Sesame et les Lys was a way for Proust to take an interest in religious art, but also to cultivate his own vision of art. Ruskin was for Proust a guide who participated in the support of his artistic self by transfering a certain number of aesthetic conceptions to which his mind would never have been able to access on its own. Proust succeeds in recognizing the decisive dimension of the Christian religion and its implications for Ruskin's aesthetics. Transcending the religious dimension, Proust realizes that Christian architecture, as understood by Ruskin, acquires a meaning other than religious, namely that of a past sublimated by the powers of art. Thus the historical dimension is annihilated in favor of an aesthetic perception of works from the past. Our article therefore aims to show how this experience of translation allowed Proust to deconstruct the aesthetic vision of the author of the translated text, while constructing a vision of art that is his own.

The aim of this paper is to comment the links between the work of Louis-Sébastien Mercier, The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever The Was One, and narrative utopia model. The Mercier’s work is often considered as inventive fiction which presents a new type of utopia focused on the future, but a large number of traditional narrative strategies is used by the author to show Paris in 25th century. The future civilization is built on the Enlightenment ideas but it remains still attached by its culture to the 18th century. The Mercier’s work is inspired by the utopism but in this fiction the reader finds more a fictional realization of dreams and philosophical thinking about human nature.

Focusing on the major intellectual debates surrounding the Black and African Renaissance, the interview with Sarah Frioux-Salgas, head of archives and collections’ resources at the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac media library, covers topics such as the role of Black writers’ and artists’ congresses and art festivals in the cultural reaffirmation of Black people during the decolonization era of the 1950s-60s, the place of literature in the shaping of Black pan-African and transcontinental solidarity, the figure of the Black intellectual, particularly that of Léopold Sédar Senghor, and the networks of ideological affinities and antagonisms formed by Black writers, artists and activists. The interview aims to highlight the complexity of the socio-political and aesthetic issues at stake, all too often summed up in simplified definitions of projects such as negritude or Pan-Africanism.