Twelve international scholars consider the neglected role of sculpture in the development of aesthetic thought and poetic practice in France during the period 1789 to 1859. Richly documented and interdisciplinary in approach, these essays reveal the latent tensions underlying the commonplace opposition between classicism and Romanticism during a time when the lure of Greek and Roman Antiquity continued to exert a powerful influence on even the most Romantic of artists and writers. Through close analysis of the relationship between sculptural practice and poetic expression, the essays illuminate the complex, at times conflicting, ways by which writers and sculptors reanimate this privileged artistic medium to forge what will become a new aesthetic for a modern age. Nine essays are in French, and three in English.