Publisher's Synopsis
This book outlines the legacy of Philostratos in Western literature and shows that the sophist gave birth to a new literary pattern. The interdisciplinary and comparative approach reveals the fecundity of this pattern. The revival of the Eikones in the Renaissance induces the fashion of book-galleries. Its pedagogical virtues are used in artistic guides published in Italy at the time as well as in books written for princely education. Philostratos inspired various poets, from Marino to Valery. Novels and short stories may also be structured upon the pattern of the art gallery as it appears in Julien Gracq and Marguerite Yourcenar's work or in the last novel of Pierre Michon, Onze. Philostratos, sometimes considered as the first art critic in the nineteenth century, hence raises questions about the relationship between the space of the text and the space of the gallery. The first imitates the second, or sometimes creates it, as for example in the Dutch museum of Paul Claudel, or even further replaces it by the space of the creation, as in LAtelier contemporain of Francis Ponge. French text."
