Like other instruments of cultural transmission such as school anthologies, illustrated monographs demonstrate a conception of the author which conforms with the conventions of literary history. However, a comparative analysis of different anthologies of the same author makes it possible to conclude that biographical discourse is far from being a homogeneous discursive category. The construction of Rousseau's auctorial figure in the collection ‘Écrivains de toujours’ and in the collection ‘Albums de la Pléiade’ is a good example of this claim. An examination of the relationship between iconography and text is an effective means of approaching illustrated monographs as plurisemiotic objects: though in both of the series studied here the technique is based on collage and commentary, it is carried out differently. Neither at the textual level nor at the level of the image are the editorial choices similar. Thus in the Pléiade album, the photographs act as testimony and the text is more a comment on the photographs; in Rousseau par lui-même, the text is a commentary on the author's works and the images which accompany it assume an illustrative function. In the first case a true cult of the author is maintained, while in the second case the text veers away from the legendary perception of the author. However, the enunciative characteristics of the relationship between Rousseau and his biographers always manifest sympathy and admiration. A further study of other monographs of the same collections will allow for a broader application of these conclusions.
A Comparative Analysis on Writing Chinese Literary History: Focusing on the Treatment of Zuo Zhuan(左傳)
