Gautier contre Sainte-Beuve Les Grotesques

Nourished by the reading of the Tableau historique et critique de la poésie et du théâtre français au xvi^e siècle, published by Sainte-Beuve in 1828 although severely received by him, presenting itself as a series of studies but displaying a certain carelessness and even irony with regard to the biographical quest, Les Grotesques by Théophile Gautier (1844) is the ideal place for analysing the ambiguous position of this writer with regard to biographical criticism and the debate which pitted him against Sainte-Beuve on this point.