Fashioned Texts and Painted Books: Nineteenth-Century French Fan Poetry

Fashioned Texts and Painted Books examines the folding fan’s multiple roles in fin-de-siècle and early twentieth-century French literature. Focusing on the fan’s identity as a symbol of feminine sexuality, as a collectible art object, and, especially, as an alternative book form well suited to the reception of poetic texts, the study highlights the fan’s suitability as a substrate for verse, deriving from its myriad associations with coquetry and sex, flight, air, and breath. Close readings...