January 2015
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This paper offers an analysis of the 'artist story' 'The Painter', written by the Romantic Vladimir Odoevskij in 1839: this short story is usually interpreted as are all the genre of the Romantic and post-Romantic 'artist stories' and considered as a demonstration that it is impossible to realize superior artistic values in the ordinary world. This paper applies to Odoevskij's short story a new way of reading such well-known texts, using the frame constructed in collaboration between social sciences and literary criticism in the studies of other European literature: such a method suggests that for many years the interpretation of theses texts has proceeded from the material support on which these works were read by the modern public, but that returning to the original conditions of publication helps reading them anew. In this perspective, it becomes possible to consider the 'artist story' composed by Odoevskij, not as a form of disillusion towards Romantic ideals, but as the only way to perpetuate them and make them public.