In a culture increasingly obsessed with the visual self-image and extreme self-exposure in
which reality is constantly obscured and misrepresented through concealment and spin the roles
display and disguise play in literature thought and visual culture are particularly prescient.
This collection developed from papers presented at a postgraduate conference in Oxford in
September 2008 presents a coherent view of key developments in the notions of display and
disguise in French culture and provides a thought-provoking contribution to contemporary
criticism. The volume includes essays from both senior researchers and graduate students using
close readings and theoretical approaches from the psychoanalytic to the postcolonial. These
are arranged in four main sections dealing with notions of performance disclosure illusion
and concealment respectively. Drawing on new research in a wide range of periods in fields
including art photography theatre travel writing and the novel the authors consider the
notions of display and disguise in relation to works by artists such as Molière Flaubert
Proust Dalí Vinaver and Sophie Calle.This volume contains ten contributions in English and
one in French.
