The Needle and the Pen

Abstract Chapter 3 explores the transfer between printmaking and writing across the Goncourts’ six co-written novels. Liliane Louvel’s concept of the hybrid iconotext provides a framework for identifying diverse points of contact between etching and the brothers’ experimental writing style, écriture artiste [artistic writing]. From the micro-level of the sentence to the macro-level of the chapter, this section investigates how the Goncourt brothers’ involvement in the etching revival and intimate knowledge of the etching process left its mark on their novels. It explores how the Goncourts drew inspiration from contemporary etchings by artists such as Charles Méryon, transferred vocabulary and techniques from etching into writing, and used the same principles behind nineteenth-century print albums to structure their narratives. Lastly, the chapter closes with a discussion of James Tissot and Jean-François Raffaelli’s etched illustrations for editions of Renée Mauperin (1884) and Germinie Lacerteux (1890). As prints inspired by the Goncourts’ novels, these two very different sets of illustrations bring the relationship between print and prose in the Goncourts’ fiction full circle.