Dominique Vivant Denon - from travels in Italy to the Louvre Museum. Toward a typology of the 18th century travelogue.

DOMINIQUE VIVANT DENON - FROM TRAVELS IN ITALY TO THE LOUVRE MUSEUM. TOWARD A TYPOLOGY OF THE 18TH CENTURY TRAVELOGUE. Keywords: travelogue, 18th century, libertine culture, Italy, Egypte, Napoleon, Louvre. Number of characters: 121 846 (68 pages) The present thesis, Dominique Vivant Denon - From travels in Italy to the Louvre Museum is divided into two parts. The first one is a monograph on baron Vivant Denon, an important figure of the cultural life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the author of Point de Lendemain, two travelogues, Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte and Voyage en Sicile, but, primarily, Napoleon's advisor in the field of fine art and the first director of The Louvre. The introductory pages of the thesis deal with the reception of Denon's works. There is a certain flux in the perception of Denon's oeuvre which has given rise to a range of interesting issues. One of them, the popularity of the libertine culture of pre-revolutionary France in the second half of the twentieth century, accounts for the fact that the novella Point de Lendemain is today the best known piece among Denon's extensive and multifaceted writings. A shift in the perception of the travelogue as a literary genre in our time, when the remotest of places are accessible in hours, may be..