Ourika in Black and White: Textual and Visual Interplay

Abstract

Although a bestseller after its publication in 1823, Mme de Duras's novel, Ourika , was subsequently forgotten by French literary canons. It recently enjoyed a new popularity and is increasingly studied. In this article, the interplay of Mme de Duras' text and various artistic representations is analyzed with an emphasis on its protagonist's racial coding. First, the nineteenth-century corpus of images depicting the eponymous character Ourika is examined. Through a descriptive and thematic analysis informed by theory on the process of illustration as translation, I study how characters and plot are rendered as visual images. Then, more recent images of Ourika as they appear on book covers are read as propagating ideas and values of the late twentieth century, which also contributed to the revival of Mme de Duras's text. I show how the politics of representation and publication issues intersect and how, despite changes in the socio-political and cultural contexts of the last two centuries, the representation of Ourika as captive remains in the text/image relationship.