(Dé)doublement as Radical Aesthetic in Le Voyage d’Urien: Gide, Denis and Latour

Abstract

ABSTRACT Building on a tantalizing footnote by Anne-Marie Christin, my article analyses the illustrated editions of André Gide's Le Voyage d'Urien in tandem. It looks at the 1893 edition, a collaboration between Gide and Maurice Denis, and the 1928 edition, featuring illustrations by Alfred Latour. I explore the impact the two sets of illustrations might have on our reading of Urien's travels, demonstrating the potential these divergent visuals have to (re)shape our perceptions of the narrative's central journey. The co-existence of these editions also helps us ask how the illustrations add to and even disrupt conceptions of the reading process.