(Dé)valoriser la littérature : le texte pris dans le culte des images

The boom that illustration enjoyed in the 1820’s and 1830’s changed the contents of bookshops as well as editorial issues, which were reshaped in the face of the public’s growing taste for images. The charm offensive of this minor art, which finally integrated into mass culture and won its autonomy, was to raise a tension between the writers’ ambition to see their works published and their fear to see the image draw the reader away from the text, which was of course meant to be sold but also destined to get literary recognition. The breaking down of the barriers of genre, which Romantics were so keen on, laid the foundation of a new approach to the text, the literary value of which receded, being underrated by the new majority of readers, to the benefit of new assessment criteria.