The Essay World of Émile Montégut

Abstract

In 1865 Émile Montégut, literary critic best known for his long association with the Revue des deux mondes, contributed a major article in two parts to the Moniteur universel on the subject of one of its most distinguished collaborators, Théophile Gautier. In composing this article Montégut had been faced with a problem that might never have occurred to a less conscientious and original critic. His material, after long meditation, was well enough defined. Its content centered around the interpretation of Gautier as a dual nature, “âme gauloise” and “âme contemplative,” and revealed much that was most characteristic of its author as a critic: his concentration on contemporary writing, his interest in defining various forms of the Romantic imagination, his concern with dilettantism as both a strength and a weakness, his frankly personal approach to his subject, an approach based on the belief that in literary criticism there can be no “instrument unique” and that each critic should seek out those aspects of an author with which he has some affinity, hoping that the true meaning and unity of the work will emerge for the intelligent reader from a symphony of individual impressions on the part of numerous critics.