Dans le vague des sentiments : l’expression du flou comme spécialité des romancières d’une période esthétiquement indéfinie, 1780–1820 ?
In the Vagueness of Feelings: The Expression of Vagueness as a Specialty of Female Novelists from an Aesthetically Indefinite Period, 1780–1820?

Summary/Abstract: The word “flou” only appears in French-speaking romantic literature around 1830, but the notion is very present in literature from the end of the 18th century, with the idea that blur is linked to the feminine, with less decided lines and with more volatile energy. We are therefore interested in this article in the treatment of vagueness by female novelists of the period 1780–1820, with the hypothesis that female writers would be, more than their male counterparts, specialized in the expression of vagueness. However, we discover that authors like Genlis, Krüdener, Cottin and Staël are not very inclined to describe blurred landscapes or objects. If they develop a poetic of vagueness in their novels, it is above all to signify the disturbance of emotions and passions, very often attributing this uncertainty of perception to male characters, more inclined to indulge in a sweet sadness dissolving the forms from outside for the benefit of an indeterminate state of the soul. Perceived as a way of perceiving the world borrowed from men, more than an originally feminine conception, vagueness, if it evokes a melancholic inclination of feeling, can nevertheless become, under certain authors’ pens, the source of a rapture of the soul.

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