Text Image and the Problem with Perfection in Nineteenth-Century France

Daniel Sipe focuses on the persistent afterlife of utopias in works by artists and writers who include François-René de Chateaubriand Etienne Cabet J.J. Grandville Charles Barbara Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam Victor Hugo Gustave Courbet and Charles Baudelaire. By juxtaposing these works with those of social scientists such as Charles Fourier Sipe provides the historical context for comprehending the significance and implications of this phenomenon in nineteenth-century utopian art and literature.