Recommendations
Books Like La Cathédrale
Best books to read after La Cathédrale by Huysmans
Readers who respond to La Cathédrale's meditation on Chartres as the supreme Catholic aesthetic object, its art historical interpretation of Gothic symbolism, and Huysmans's aesthetic Catholicism will find the wider tradition of French Catholic aesthetic literature.
- 1Buy
En Route
by Joris-Karl Huysmans
En Route is the essential predecessor of La Cathédrale: the conversion at the Trappist monastery in En Route is the spiritual preparation for the Chartres meditation, and understanding Durtal's spiritual condition when he arrives at Chartres requires knowing the journey that brought him there.
- 2Buy
L'Oblat
by Joris-Karl Huysmans
L'Oblat (1903) is the final Durtal novel and follows immediately from La Cathédrale: where La Cathédrale culminates in the recognition of Chartres as the supreme Catholic aesthetic object, L'Oblat shows Durtal's attempt to live permanently in its presence as a Benedictine oblate.
- 3Buy
Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres
by Henry Adams
Adams's 1904 meditation on Norman and Gothic architecture, focused on Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, is the closest English parallel to La Cathédrale: both Adams and Huysmans treat Chartres as the supreme embodiment of the medieval Catholic worldview and use it as a critical perspective on modernity.
- 4Buy
The Stones of Venice
by John Ruskin
Ruskin's great work of architectural criticism is the most important predecessor of La Cathédrale's method: Ruskin's treatment of Venetian Gothic as a moral and spiritual system (not merely an aesthetic style) directly anticipates Huysmans's treatment of Chartres's iconographic program as a spiritual text.
- 5Buy
The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments
by William Durandus
Durandus's thirteenth-century Rationale divinorum officiorum is the principal source for the medieval symbolism that Huysmans interprets in La Cathédrale: understanding what Durandus says about the symbolic meanings of architectural forms, liturgical colors, and sacred objects illuminates the specific interpretations Huysmans makes.
- 6Buy
À Rebours
by Joris-Karl Huysmans
À Rebours shows the artistic sensibility that La Cathédrale brings to Chartres: the Des Esseintes who preferred Moreau and Redon to academic painting becomes the Durtal who prefers medieval Gothic to modern architecture — the same aesthetic intelligence applied to the same judgment of what survives in art.
- 7Buy
Death and the King's Horseman
by Wole Soyinka
Soyinka's play, though culturally remote, shows the same concern with ritual as the intersection of the aesthetic and the spiritual that underlies La Cathédrale: both works treat ritual performance (the Catholic Mass in Huysmans, the Yoruba ritual in Soyinka) as a form of access to spiritual reality that cannot be separated from its aesthetic form.
- 8Buy
The Cathedral
by Joris-Karl Huysmans
The art historical and symbolistic analysis that fills La Cathédrale is more accessible when read alongside Huysmans's other art criticism — particularly his essays on Grünewald (Trois Primitifs, 1905) and his early art criticism (L'Art moderne, 1883) — which show the development of his aesthetic method from Naturalist art criticism to Catholic symbolism.
More La Cathédrale Resources
More Reading Recommendations
View all →Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.