Jean Lorrain: From Caricature to Ekphrasis, Between Social Critique and Fascination with Decadence
Abstract
This study explores Jean Lorrain’s aesthetics through the dual lens of caricature and ekphrasis, two complementary forms shaping his relationship to reality. As a fin-de-siècle chronicler and novelist, Lorrain transforms caricature into a critical and poetic language, revealing the duplicity of the bourgeois world he depicts. His collaborations with illustrators such as Bottini and Orazi demonstrate a constant dialogue between text and image, where visual satire is mirrored by pictorial writing. In La Maison Philibert (1904), distortion becomes both an aesthetic and moral device, denouncing bourgeois hypocrisy while celebrating the artificial beauty of decadence. Through a prose infused with irony and hallucination, reminiscent of Goya or Redon, Lorrain develops a true poetics of deformation, where self-representation and modernity converge in an ambiguous quest for truth and style.
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