Cette thèse tente de répondre à deux questions principales : qui est le saint pour Péguy, et qu’est-ce que le saint, chez Péguy, fait au monde. Dans la première partie la réflexion est axée sur les saints (reconnus comme tels par l’Église), par, ainsi que les « saints » (selon un procédé de mise en relief littéraire, propre à Péguy) qui apparaissent dans les œuvres de Péguy. Nous tâchons d’y répondre à la question : qui est saint chez Péguy, qu’est-ce qui, selon cet auteur, fait d’un homme un saint, un Juste ? Péguy parle de figures d’exemplarité et réfléchit sur ses formes possibles : l’héroïsme, la sainteté, le génie. Il a sa propre liste de vertus (ce qui fait d’un homme un saint) qui sont parfois différentes des vertus traditionnellement attribuées aux saints catholiques. L’impact de son cheminement vers la foi sur sa philosophie de l’histoire mène Péguy vers un questionnement sur la sainteté même. C’est pourquoi la deuxième partie de cette thèse cherche la réponse à la question : que fait le saint au monde, dans le monde, pour le monde, comment le saint chez Péguy change le monde ? Il s’agit en somme de cerner le rôle de la sainteté dans le monde, y compris en tant que concept éthique revisité. Nous nous penchons aussi sur le ou les rôles que Péguy attribue au saint dans la société : solitaire parce que différent des autres humains, solidaire parce qu’agissant dans ce monde dans lequel il poursuit l’œuvre de l’Incarnation / The thesis aims at answering two main questions: Who is a saint from the point of view of Péguy. What does a saint do in the world.In the first part, the author approaches a set of questions: who is a saint? what makes a person saint or just for Péguy? To answer this, the author analyses the examples of saints in the works of Péguy, considering not only the saints recognised by church, but equally saints, specific to Péguy.Péguy portray saints as models for imitation, and he examines a diversity of forms these models could take: a saint, a hero, a genius. These «saint» created by Péguy possess a number of «virtues», sometimes radically different to those traditionally attributed to saints which makes them saint from the point of view of Péguy. Since the saint for Péguy is presented in direct connection with the world he lives in, the second part of the thesis answers the questions: what does a saint does in the world, for the the world, with the world. How a saint’s activity changes the world? In this part of the thesis, we approach the definition of the role of the sanctity in the world as imagined by Péguy. Péguy attributes two roles to a saint in the society: solitude and solidarity. A saint is lonely, because he is different from other human beings, but at the same time, a saint is united with the world in acting in the world in order to convey the incarnation, the embodiment of God in this world.For Péguy sanctity reveals itself as the new ethics instrumental in the construction of a new, harmonious city, which Péguy tries to build throughout his writings. This new ethics is supposed to revolutionise the current world, changing both morale and social paradigms

(in English): The aim of the thesis is to analyze three selected works of Charles Péguy: Le Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d'Arc, Le Mystère du porche de la deuxième vertu and Le Mystère des saints Innocents. The particular Mysteries will be divided into main thematic units and their primary development lines will be researched. Subsequently, there will be observed the thematic evolution of all three works and their interconnection. Both their differences and their common topics will be assessed. It will be reflected what suffering and hope mean to the author and in which manner are these key themes expressed in the text. Then the concentration will be focused on the nature and development of the main characters, and their connection to the author's life. Equally, it will be necessary to mention the author's theology, his attitude towards the church practice of that time and the resulting influence on his work. Finally, there will be synthesized the message of this three selected works.

À l’ère de la spécialisation, des sciences sociales et de l’autonomisation de la littérature, la langue du polémiste s’attaque à « l’universel reportage » (Mallarmé). Les Cahiers de la quinzaine de Charles Péguy (1900-1914), la revue Die Fackel (le Flambeau) de Karl Kraus (1899-1936) et les « écrits divers » (zawen) des années 1920-1930 de Lu Xun représentent trois tentatives pour situer l’œuvre littéraire dans une frange critique de l’actualité, à distance du journalisme et du feuilleton. Le texte du polémiste est un discours sans autorisation sur les phénomènes politiques, sociaux et culturels de son temps. Il exalte un « je » souverain, qui porte le masque de Timon, de Thersite ou de Xing Tian, le combattant acéphale de la mythologie chinoise. Rejeté hors de la littérature ou du champ de la création par ses contemporains et par l’histoire littéraire, le polémiste perturbe les catégories génériques et l’idée même d’œuvre. La thèse propose de réinterroger le statut de l’œuvre polémique dans la littérature. Elle examine les différents lieux et temps d’inscription propres au polémiste (discours social, revue, recueil, œuvre complète, anthologie…) et tente de poser les jalons d’une poétique de la polémique. La constitution d’une telle poétique passe par la ressaisie des interdits relatifs à la polémique. Au polémiste, il est reproché de manquer de tact. La thèse inverse ce reproche en édifiant la catégorie paradoxale de « tact du polémiste », à partir de la pensée critique allemande en particulier (Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno). La parrêsia du polémiste n’est pas tant le tout-dire, qu’une certaine optique, un art de l’exagération et de la déformation : une souveraineté abusive sur le détail. La thèse ouvre sur l’enjeu de la mémoire de ces œuvres : les textes de polémistes deviennent des sismographes de la littérature mondiale, eux qui ne circulent pas facilement au-delà des frontières nationales et n’ont pas la lisibilité des fictions. / At a time of specialization of professions and autonomization of literature, the language of the polemicist attacks the “universal reportage” (Mallarmé). The Cahiers de la quinzaine of the French writer Charles Péguy (1900-1914), the anti-journal Die Fackel of the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus (1899-1936) and the “miscellaneous texts” (zawen) written by the Chinese author Lu Xun in the 1920s and 1930s represent three attempts to write a literary work on the fringes of the conventional categories of journalism or “feuilleton”. The text of the polemicist is a non-authorized discourse on current political, social and cultural events. It exalts a sovereign “I”, who wears the mask of Timon, Thersites or Xing Tian, the beheaded rebel in Chinese mythology. Rejected from literature by his contemporaries and literary history, the polemicist upsets the well-established literary categories as well as the understanding of what a writer’s work is.This thesis analyzes the different dimensions of the way the polemicist writes about his time (social discourse, magazines, collection, books, complete works, anthologies) and draws the outline of a poetic of the polemic. This attempt implies to reconsider what the literary tradition blames the polemicist for, especially his lack of “tact”. This blaming is here reversed, as we try to develop the paradoxical category of the “tact of the polemicist”, inspired by the German critical thinkers (Walter Benjamin, Th. W. Adorno). For the polemicist, the parrhesia does not consist in saying everything but rather in trying to find the right perspective. It is above all an art of exaggeration and distortion: a sovereign use and abuse of details. This thesis leads to the question of the memory of these works: while polemicists do not easily cross national borders and do not offer the readability of fictions, their texts paradoxically become a kind of seismograph of “world literature”.

Nous considérons quelques écrivains et critiques littéraires chez qui la lecture de la philosophie d'Henri Bergson, du vivant de celui-ci, a fait naître une réflexion intense et rigoureuse quant à sa signification et à son avenir. Charles Péguy, Marcel Proust, Jacques Rivière, Albert Thibaudet et Jean Paulhan – l'antibergsonien Julien Benda leur servant de contrepoint – éprouvent la nécessité de contester la quiétude de Bergson ou la manière qu'il a de refermer son problème. Ils restent néanmoins fidèles à ce problème, apparaissant dès lors surtout soucieux de recommencer le bergsonisme, de repartir de sa table rase. Bergson leur semble trahir inconsciemment ses propres principes : soit qu'il échoue à faire attention aux découpages propres du réel et qu'il cède à de faux problèmes, soit qu'il cède plutôt à de fausses solutions et laisse ses lecteurs dans l'incertitude, initiant malgré lui une « crise de la durée ». Ils ont le sentiment de pouvoir être bergsoniens mieux que Bergson, indissociablement avec et contre lui. Il leur semble surtout que l'accomplissement du bergsonisme comme philosophie ne puisse se faire que dans une œuvre de littérature : soit qu'ils trouvent dans Bergson une théorie inattendue de l'urgence d'écrire, soient qu'ils voient dans la littérature, notamment romanesque, la réalisation vraie de l'intention bergsonienne, ou le moyen d'atteindre une philosophie enfin durable. L'heure n'est plus à mettre la vérité du morceau de sucre dans sa dissolution, mais bien à laisser l'eau du temps gonfler les arêtes de la fleur de papier japonais – et refaire d'elle l'occasion de retrouvailles, de soi avec soi et de soi avec tous les autres. / I consider a few literary writers and critics whose reading of Henri Bergson's philosophy was careful and passionate enough to make them reflect on its true meaning and possible future. Each in their own way, Charles Péguy, Marcel Proust, Jacques Rivière, Albert Thibaudet and Jean Paulhan – Julien Benda working here as a counterpoint – needed to criticize Bergson's tranquillity and rejected part of the solutions he offered. They nevertheless stayed true to his fundamental problem, thus offering more of a new beginning to bergsonism than a condemnation. They felt that Bergson unconsciously betrayed his own principles: either because he failed to pay attention to the true divisions of reality and was led to the formulation of fake problems, or because he accepted fake solutions on the contrary, and therefore left his readers in distress. In the latter case, they argued, the philosophy of duration did nothing but increase the destructive effect of time. They felt that they could be better bergsonians than Bergson. More importantly, they came to the idea that bergsonism as a philosophy could only be accomplished within the pages of a literary work. Some discovered in Bergson an unexpectedly positive theory of language. Some saw in the writing of novels the true realization of Bergson's intention. Others understood literature as the only way to escape the anguish created by philosophy and to slow down the pace of history. The truth of sugar lies not in its dissolving, unlike Bergson suggested, and one should rather let the water of time swell the edges of Proust's flower of japanese paper. In it lies the possibility of finding oneself again, as well as regaining a community.

Nella prima parte del presente lavoro si indaga l’attività del Centro Culturale Charles Péguy di Milano dalla fondazione nel 1964 alla contestazione nel 1968. Il Centro era nato da giovani laureati che avevano fatto parte di Gioventù Studentesca. Alcuni di essi nel 1966 fondarono anche la casa editrice Jaca Book, a cui è dedicata la seconda parte dell’elaborato. Attraverso l’analisi dell’attività culturale del Centro Péguy e delle pubblicazioni firmate da alcuni dei membri dello stesso si ricostruisce l’approccio tenuto nei confronti di alcuni dei temi più problematici degli anni immediatamente precedenti il Sessantotto come il rapporto con i comunisti, l’interpretazione del Concilio e la recezione della cultura neo-marxista. Attraverso l’analisi del catalogo di Jaca Book si è potuto analizzare l’evolversi di questi temi negli anni della contestazione e il loro progressivo sviluppo nell’ambito della politica, dell’economia e della teologia. / The first part of this work investigates the activity of the Charles Péguy Cultural Center in Milan from its foundation in 1964 to the 1968 protests. That center was established by some young people at the end of their university path that during the Fifties and the Sixties participated to Gioventù Studentesca. In 1966 some of the members of the center Charles Péguy begun a publishing house called Jaca Book to whom is dedicated the second part of the thesis. Through the analysis of the cultural activity of Péguy Cultural Center and the articles published by its members on some periodicals this work retraces the approach they had to some of the most problematic themes of the years that prepared the Sixty-eight as the relationship with the communists, the interpretation of the Vatican II and the reception of the neo-marxist culture. Inspecting the Jaca Book catalog was possible to analyze the evolution of that themes during the years of the student protests until 1975 and their progressive development in politics, economics and theology.