The issue of branding and the polysemy of the word is the starting point for this analysis of tattoos and their representation in literary texts. Images in the text or as opposed to texts - texts within texts - tattoos always raise the issue of the limits to the figuration of the body, which they bring to existence and allow to be seen through writing. In the 19th century medical investigations established classifications for tattoos, and even catalogued them as nosological emblems allowing the identification of marginal populations. The writers who, in their turn, took an interest in tattoos, either integrated them within a thematics or made them express something else, function as a coded clue, attract attention to what is both hidden and shown at the same time. Tattoos thus participate in a complex strategy where advertisement and camouflage serve an aesthetic intention or refer to the new conditions in which literature is being produced.