The “Vénus de Milo” of Leconte de Lisle. An example of signic recoding in French poetry of nineteenth century

Abstract

The present article aims to give new thought, on the basis of the poem “Vénus de Milo” by Leconte de Lisle, to the process of “signic recoding” to which the aforementioned statue was subjected in the French Literary Imaginary during the first half of the 19th century, process that quickly turned it into unequivocal symbol of the Ideal Beauty. pursuing this purpose, the article unfolds from a brief introduction in which will be examined the role played initially by critics, archaeologists and historians of art to, subsequently, analyze how Leconte de Lisle assumed and “remodeled” the cited recoding in order to adapt it to his poetic ideology.