Generical Intersections in Nineteenth-Century French Painting and Literature: Manet’s La Musique aux Tuileries and Baudelaire’s Petits Poèmes en prose

Abstract

Confrontation and interaction in European culture are frequently motors of change. In nineteenth-century France, they manifested themselves in writing and art as intersections reflecting changes the French society was undergoing. Certain generical intersections helped in this period to create the conditions that made possible 'modern' forms of cultural expression. In Manet's La Musique aux Tuileries, the coalescence of two hitherto distinct painterly genres - history and genre - marks the re-attachment of history's grand narratives to the painting of modern life, while in Baudelaire's Petits Poemes en prose the timeless beauty of lyrical expression is relocated in the real world of contemporary society.