Réalité et imaginaire des parcs et des jardins dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle

Although gardens have always played an important part in European literature, their representation becomes gradually more prevalent in French art and literature after 1850. Such a recurrence may be explained in part, as this study claims, by Napoleon III's attempt to beautify an aging and dirty capital city, as well as providing each city in France with a public garden. A close study of the prose and poetry of the period reflects many aspects of this change in sensibility, bestowing a new dimension to the garden in fin-de-siècle flights of the imagination. If romantic topoï are still present, they are usually given a new twist. Moreover, due to the growing industrialization of the French landscape, gardens evoke a nostalgia for an idealized past, a time when men and women were one with nature. (In French) (JS)