Impressions 1860-1920
ESSE 2016
Galway, Monday 22-Friday 26 August
Seminar S39
Convenors:
Bénédicte Coste (University of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France): benedicte.coste@u-bourgogne.fr
Elisa Bizzotto (University of Venice, Italy): bizzotto@iuav.it
Sophie Aymes (University of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France): sophie.aymes@u-bourgogne.fr
The seminar will discuss intermedial practices, the mutual influence of artistic practice and textual production, as well as the dual meaning of impression as a mode of reception and of expression. Papers will examine impression both as theme and trope in literary texts and art criticism in connection with the material characteristics of media in which writers/artists chose to express themselves. They can also address how the shift from late Victorian aesthetics to modernist experimentation was negotiated in this field.
The time period considered here spans six decades which saw the advent of photomechanical process and the revival of printmaking as an “original” mode of expression based on the premium granted to individual impression as autographic response and to the trope of the print as imprint on a medium and/or on the mind.