The essay by Kirstin Ringelberg, professor of art history, reinterprets the "floral empire" of artist/salonnière Madeleine Lemaire as a queer heterotopia.
Kirstin Ringelberg, professor of art history, argues in “The Court of Lilacs, The Studio of Roses, The Garden at Réveillon: Madeleine Lemaire’s Empire of Flowers,” that the famed French painter and salon hostess built a floral empire across literary, artistic and physical spaces that can be reinterpreted positively as symbolic of queer transformation.
Based on a presentation given at the 19th Century French Studies conference at Brown University in fall 2016, the essay is part of a larger project Ringelberg is currently developing on Madeleine Lemaire’s work, salon and historical reception.
The essay appears in the international journal Marcel Proust, roman moderne: perspectives comparatistes, edited by Vincent Ferré and Raffaello Rossi with Delphine Paon, which is volume 14 of the series Marcel Proust Aujourd’hui: Revue Annuelle Bilingue/Annual Bilingual Review, edited by Sjef Houppermans, Nell de Hullu-van Doeselaar, Manet van Montfrans, Annelies Schulte Nordholt and Sabine van Wesemael.