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While anthropology has given scholars new impulses for studying the portrait, there is in literary studies - compared to the fine arts, for example - still a great deal to catch up on. Taking examples from French and Italian literature, this volume deals with the topic of literary characterisation both in a historical and a systematic perspective. In addition to the study of specific works or the conceptions of particular authors on humankind, the contributions focus on various other aspects such as the literary techniques of portraits, portraits as representative images of humanity of certain eras, the functions of portraits in texts, different portrayal techniques in novels, short stories and other genres, as well as the composition of particularly striking portraits. In modernity and postmodernity, in particular, there are experimental and unorthodox procedures and methods that are appropriate for revealing new dimensions of the portrait. The volume offers new approaches to the literary art of portrayal and contributes in this way to a long yearned for European poetics of the literary portrait.

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