Marc Fumaroli was a scholar of French classical rhetoric and art. He is acknowledged for the revival of Rhetoric as field of study of European culture, in a sharp move away from both structuralism and post-modernism.
He was born in metropolitan France, in Marseille, but he grew up in the Moroccan city of Fez. He was educated at the university of Aix-Marseille and at the Sorbonne. He began his academic career in Lille but continued it it Paris. Following his appointment to a chair in Seventeenth Century Studies at the Sorbonne, he was elected to a chair in Rhetoric and Society in Europe (16th and 17th century) at the Collège de France. He held it from 1986 until mandatory retirement in 2002, and then became an emeritus professor.
He was a member of the British Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Société d'Histoire Littéraire de la France, the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and the Académie Française. Before being elected a member in 1995, Fumaroli received from the Académie Française the Monseigneur Marcel Prize in 1982 and the Critique Prize in 1992. He was promoted to the title of commander of the French Legion of Honor in 2008, after previously being named chevalier in 1993 and officer in 2002.
After his death on 24 June 2020, the office of French President Emmanuel Macron praised Fumaroli as one of the country's greatest ever storytellers and historians.
Extenso, denso y, sobre todo, excelente documentado ensayo acerca de la imagen: publicitaria, política, artística...Quizá algo redundante en algunos de sus planteamientos, pero no cabe duda que esta monumental obra de Fumaroli hará las delicias de todos aquellos interesados en la generación y transmisión de imágenes.