French Literature Reviews - 2026

X. Giudicelli, Portraits of Dorian Gray - The Text, the Book, the Image
Comparative and World Literature

Portraits of Dorian Gray - The Text, the Book, the Image
Xavier Giudicelli
Pascal Aquien (Foreword by)

Publication Date: 08/09/2016 Publisher: PU Paris-Sorbonne Collection: History of Print ISBN: 979-10-231-0537-7 EAN: 9791023105377 Format: Paperback Pages: 404 pp.

"This full-length, unsettling portrait of a Dorian Gray will haunt […]", Stéphane Mallarmé wrote to Oscar Wilde in April 1891. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's only novel, tells the story of a portrait that pushes the boundaries of representation. The painting is embedded within the text through allusion, even absence. A canvas with a hole, an empty center around which the entire novel revolves, the portrait of Dorian Gray presents artists with a challenge that many have sought to take up.

At the intersection of literary studies, book history, and art history, this work explores the metamorphoses of a text that resembles a modern myth and has enjoyed extraordinary posterity. The analysis of these portraits of Dorian Gray also allows us to trace a history of the image's place in books from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, from the bibliophile's book of the 1920s to the contemporary graphic novel.

Painting a portrait of Dorian Gray can only be done through references to aesthetic codes and models, thus offering an overview of the history of representations in the 20th century, from Art Nouveau volutes to Expressionist films, from society portraits to Bacon's "flayed figures". Through the study of a case that is both atypical and exemplary, Xavier Giudicelli reflects on the relationships forged between text and image within the book.

Text and iconography combine to offer new perspectives on The Picture of Dorian Gray: this reflection is embodied in the very object that this book constitutes.

A former student of the École normale supérieure (Fontenay-Saint-Cloud) and a certified teacher of English (agrégé d'anglais), Xavier Giudicelli is a senior lecturer in British literature at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne. His research focuses on the work of Oscar Wilde, the study of the relationship between literary text and image, the reception of Oscar Wilde's texts in the 20th century, and, more generally, the rewriting of the Victorian and Edwardian canon in the 20th and 21st centuries.
He has published numerous articles on these subjects and co-edited with Pascal Aquien a collective work on L'Importance d'être constant (The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, PURS, 2015). He also edited a special issue of Etudes anglaises on Wilde and the Arts (2016).

At the intersection of literary studies, book history, and art history, Xavier Giudicelli explores the metamorphoses of Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. The volume examines how the central painting is embedded within the text through allusion and absence, presenting artists with a challenge that has inspired an extraordinary posterity. By analyzing these various representations, the study traces a history of the image's place in books from the late nineteenth century to the contemporary graphic novel, touching upon aesthetic codes and models ranging from Art Nouveau to Francis Bacon's flayed figures.

Through the study of this atypical and exemplary case, the author reflects on the relationships forged between text and image within the physical book. Combining text and iconography, the work offers new perspectives on Wilde's novel and the broader history of representations in the twentieth century. Readers interested in the reception of Victorian and Edwardian literature, the interplay between literature and visual culture, or the afterlife of modern myths may find this volume relevant to their inquiries.