This seminar will constitute an introduction to the fast-growing research field of colour studies which emerged in the 1990s in the wake of the pioneering histories of Michel Pastoureau and John Gage. Following the recent ‘material turn’ in the humanities, colour is now being discussed by an ever-increasing number of disciplines. The nineteenth century is a particularly fertile period to address these new approaches to chromatic materiality. In this age of accelerated scientific discovery and empire, colour indeed increasingly became an object of curiosity and trade but also an important source of pleasure and a marker of quickly shifting social identities, especially in Britain where the first synthetic dyes were invented in 1856. Scientific observation led to technical innovation, which in turn triggered cultural and artistic responses that constantly challenged practices, habits and categories of perception linked to colour understood both as a substance with a material life of its own and as a material agent potentially affecting bodies and minds. Drawing on a broad range of artworks, literary and theoretical texts, our seminar will therefore interweave different disciplinary approaches (from art history to anthropology) in order to reveal the Victorians’ multifaceted engagement with the body of colour.
The seminar will be held in English. Students are expected to analyse an image and/or a literary or critical text each week. The assignments will be a 20-minute oral presentation and a written paper. Dissertation topics can broach any aspect of colour in 19th-century literature and art.
- Enseignant: Charlotte Ribeyrol