A fellowship of imaginations: Sebald’s aesthetics of chiaroscuro in The Exquisite by Laird Hunt

International audienceThis article investigates the influence of W. G. Sebald on the writing of the American novelist Laird Hunt through the comparative analysis of The Rings of Saturn and The Exquisite. This study endeavors to shed light on what, in Sebald’s imagination and in the aesthetics of his fictional prose, could have both impressed and imprinted in Laird Hunt’s creative imagination. If The Exquisite is first presented in the acknowledgments as a playful referential homage to the German master, a close reading of Laird Hunt’s novel shows a more complex dialogue with The Rings of Saturn. Indeed, The Exquisite both echoes and prolongs preoccupations that inform Sebald’s writing, especially the representation of pain, his critical view of historical discourse and the aesthetics of indirection and chiaroscuro that underpin The Rings of Saturn’s text