Book summary

First published in 1975, "La Belle Captive" is illustrated with 77 paintings by Rene Magritte. Robbe-Grillet uses Magritte's paintings as a pretext for the novel, letting them generate themes for an imaginary discourse that parallels their imagery, glosses them, contradicts them. He simultaneously comments on Magritte's paintings while taking advantage of them to parade his own favorite themes of play, erotism, and subversion. Robbe-Grillet's plot frustrates expectations yet shares with the reader his pleasure with the mysterious and poetic in Magritte's art, and with the cultural myths that he and the painter both parody. Objects move through space, without regard to laws of nature, and characters through the text with similar implausibility. The book includes a critical essay by novelist and translator Ben Stoltzfus on the pictorial and linguistic affinities between Magritte and Robbe-Grillet. Stoltzfus explores the image of the beautiful captive not only in its mythical and erotic dimensions, but also as a metaphor for the artistic process.

Media reviews

"The parthenogenetic egg generates the permutations and bifurcations of the artistic dialogue between text and image that is 'The Beautiful Captive'."