Metamorphoses of the Pygmalion Myth in French Literature 1771 – 1886 Carrie L
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2015 Metamorphoses of the Pygmalion Myth in French Literature 1771 – 1886 Carrie L. O'Connor Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation O'Connor, Carrie L., "Metamorphoses of the Pygmalion Myth in French Literature 1771 – 1886" (2015). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2304. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2304 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. METAMORPHOSES OF THE PYGMALION MYTH IN FRENCH LITERATURE 1771 – 1886 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of French Studies by Carrie L. O’Connor B.A., B.S., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2004 M.A., Middlebury College, 2005 December 2015 © Copyright 2015 Carrie L. O’Connor All rights reserved ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, and most important, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my parents. Their unwavering support and unconditional love have been my greatest inspirations to pursue my academic and professional goals. They both taught me about hard work and dedication to personal aspirations; without them, I would not be the woman that I am today. My brother Philip has provided laughter and heartfelt advice when I most needed them; he is a true friend. My Hearthstone family, though currently dispersed along the East Coast, helped me when I didn’t know that I needed help, loved me during difficult times, and always encouraged me without question. Aaron, Melanie, and Ryan – thank you for the dinners, games, walks, trips near and far, laughter, tears, and love. To all of my friends in Louisiana, thank you for welcoming me and supporting me over the years. All of my friends contributed to my success whether they knew it or not. I have been lucky to work with excellent colleagues and mentors during my undergraduate and graduate studies. I am grateful to Sharon Johnson, Richard Shryock, Fabrice Teulon, and Janell Watson at Virginia Tech for cultivating my interest in French literature and challenging me in my scholarship. My experiences at Middlebury College and in Paris enriched and broadened my cultural and literary knowledge. At Lousiana State University, I thank the entire Department of French Studies faculty for their support, inspiration, and encouragement over the years. I would not have been able to succeed were it not for the efforts, dedication, and guidance of my advisor, Kevin Bongiorni. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee, Greg Stone and Trish Suchy, as well as my Dean’s Representative: Leonard Ray. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………...…………………..iii ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………v INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 Genesis, Gender, and Genre: An Historical Perspective……………….…………5 Venus and the Role of the Divine Intervention……………………………….…..9 Techne: A Confluence of Art and Technology……………………..…................12 Todorov’s Structural Presentation of the Fantastic………………...…………….16 Ovid’s Pygmalion and Beyond……………………………………….………….20 CHAPTER ONE - OVID’S PYGMALION MYTH………………………………..……26 The Project’s Outcome…………………………………..………………………36 CHAPTER TWO - CREATING CONFUSION IN THE PYGMALION MYTH………39 The Enlightenment, Gender, and Aesthetics……………………………..………51 Eighteenth-Century Adaptations of Ovid’s Pygmalion………………….………53 L’Amante Statue, ou le Nouveau Pigmalion……….……………….……….…...61 La Fausse Statue…………………………………………………………………84 The False Statue Realigns the Ovidian Structure……………………….……….92 The Plays’ Metamorphoses: Discovering the Truth……………………………..96 CHAPTER THREE - DESTRUCTIVE PYGMALION…………………….………....100 A Vengeful Venus: Prosper Mérimée’s La Vénus d’Ille………….……...…….103 Balzac’s Le Chef-d’oeuvre Inconnu……………………………………………119 Unknowing the Masterpiece…………………………………………….……...129 CHAPTER FOUR - A NEW GALATEA (RE)ANIMATED AND (RE)CONSTRUCTED…………………………………………………………………133 Villiers De l’Isle-Adam’s L’Eve Future………………………………….…….137 Hadaly, the Ideal, Created from Alicia, a Copy………………………………...156 The Dangers of Playing God………………………………….…………….…..175 Rachilde’s Pygmalion(ne): Monsieur Vénus………………….………………..178 Rachilde’s Third Path…………………………………………………………..200 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………203 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………207 VITA………………………………………………………………………………....…215 iv ABSTRACT Writers have long explored and attempted to portray the visual artist’s challenge of creating the ideal in the real world through art. My thesis asserts that the Pygmalion myth, originally told in written form in Ovid’s 8 A.D. Metamorphoses, is the quintessential model to explore the changing, and sometimes problematic, relationships between the artist, the creation, and the creative process. The three main characters in the Pygmalion myth – the sculptor, the sculpture, and the divine intervention – each appear, albeit in different manifestations, in its later adaptations. Throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in French literature, authors explored this tripartite relationship in their texts. I claim that the retellings in my corpus attest to a renewed interest in Ovid’s myth at a time when ideologies and conceptions about the creative process underwent significant changes. Plato’s conception of the ideal in The Phaedrus and The Republic serves as a grounding for each of my texts. I begin my examination with an exegesis of the Pygmalion poem in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Chapter two explores the creation theme at the heart of Pygmalion’s quest in eighteenth-century theater to indicate the point at which French literature saw a marked increase in Pygmalion adaptations. Here, I introduce L’Amante statue (1774) and La Fausse statue (1771) into the Pygmalion corpus. Looking at the ways in which the creator figure attempts to control the potential of the ideal object through destructive means, I turn to nineteenth-century fantastic short stories in Prosper Mérimée’s La Vénus d’Ille (1837) and Balzac’s Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu (1831/7). A final chapter reveals how innovations in technology and artifice aid the artist in v reconstructing the ideal in two decadent novels: Villiers’s L’Eve future (1886) and Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus (1884). This dissertation will contribute to nineteenth-century French literary studies and eighteenth-century theater as well. Adding criticism of two eighteenth-century plays to the already significant body of Pygmalion retellings underlines the myth’s renewed popularity at the time. Each chapter examines these adaptations as part of a greater metamorphosis of the Pygmalion story itself. From creation to destruction to reconstruction, the creator figure adapts - with varied results - to a changing artistic, technological, and cultural environment. vi INTRODUCTION In the ancient myth of the sculptor king, Pygmalion is disgusted with real women; he creates a perfect ivory statue, Galatea, who comes to life after he prays to Venus, the goddess of love. The two then marry, and Venus presides over the ceremony joining the two. Honoré Daumier, the famed caricaturist, published his own take on the myth in an 1842 issue of Le Charivari. The sketch features a stupefied sculptor in his studio, surrounded by fragments of statues - a male torso sits on a table behind him while a hand and face hang on the wall next to a rudimentary sketch. Atop the pedestal in front of the Pygmalion character, a jovial, and alive, Galatea reaches down to pinch from the artist’s snuffbox. Daumier’s inscription in verse under his illustration reads: O triomphe des arts, quelle fut ta surprise, Grand sculpteur, quand tu vis ta marbre s’animer Et, d’un air chaste et doux, lentement se baisser pour te demander une prise.1 Daumier’s sketch and short verse mocks the greatness of art and the artist; the verse refers to the sculptor with the informal “tu” subject pronoun. This linguistic marker paired with Daumier’s portrayal of the sculptor as dumbfounded identify the latter as far from grandeur. In contrast to the silent, passive wife of the traditional myth, Daumier’s Galatea possesses actual agency. Daumier illustrates her in a way that shows her asserting her desires and taking Pygmalion’s possession. In Daumier’s rendering, Galatea’s existence no longer centers on pleasing Pygmalion but also on pleasing herself. While this comedic portrayal of the ancient myth seems lighthearted enough, it opens questions 1 Daumier, Honoré. Pygmalion, from Histoire Ancienne, published in Le Charivari, December 28, 1842. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Web. 13 August 2015. 1 about the representation of the artist and his creation and the changing dynamics within this relationship throughout the centuries. Interpretations of the Pygmalion myth - at its simplest, the story of an artistic creation that exceeds its creator - have continually emerged as sites of authorial exploration of artistic (pro)creation, imitation, and limitation, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus. Through