3. Literary impressionism: the handbook definitions

In The Cambridge History of French Literature, Robert Lethbridge departs from Brunetière’s early codification of the analogies between impressionist painting and literary techniques to explain literary impressionism. Drawing parallels between themes and subjects in painting and in «the work of the majority of the novelists» (Lethbridge 2011: 534) in the age of impressionism, he suggests that painters and novelists alike were occupied with motifs such as: stations, steam-engines and railways; .