Objet sculpté ou gravé, associant l’image et le texte, le monument funéraire se charge des aspirations spirituelles, sociales et artistiques de groupes sociaux divers. Dans un souci de préservation mémorielle, gisants, dalles à effigie, sarcophages ossuaires, bas-reliefs aux représentations diverses (funérailles, absoute, Christ de pitié, crucifixion, Vierge de la Chandeleur), tombeaux monumentaux ou épitaphes, mettent le défunt en scène au terme d’un cheminement de vie culminant à la quête du salut éternel de l’âme. Cette volonté de laisser une trace, de perpétuer son souvenir au-delà de la mort, pousse le commanditaire à mettre en ordre ses affaires, avant d’immortaliser ses derniers espoirs et ses dernières volontés dans la pierre. La grande variété typologique du territoire étudié, compris entre la Petite Camargue et la Catalogne du Nord du XIe au XVe siècle, met en évidence les traditions artistiques funéraires locales, et les apports septentrionaux et plus méridionaux (Espagne, Italie) qu’elles intègrent. Cette approche globale du patrimoine funéraire du littoral méditerranéen et de la société apporte une meilleure compréhension des mentalités religieuses, des pratiques juridiques (testaments) et économiques (dons, legs pieux, fondations de chapelles et d’anniversaires) et enfin esthétiques (somptuosité, ostentation), au seuil du trépas. Le croisement de différentes sources écrites et numériques (base Palissy) conduit à l’élaboration d’un corpus prenant en compte les monuments funéraires retrouvés, mais également disparus dont on garde traces dans les productions anciennes. / Carved ou engraved objet, associating the image and the text, funeral monument embodies the spiritual and artistic aspirations of various social groups. In order to preserve memory, recumbent statues, tombstones with effigy, sarcophagus ossuaries, low-reliefs with various representations (funeral, absolution, Christ of pity, crucifixion, Virgin of the Candlemas), monumental tombs or epitaphs, present the deceased at the end of his journey through life, peaking at the quest of the eternal salvation of the soul. This will to leave a trace, to perpetuate one’s memory beyond death, pushes the one who ordered such tombstone into putting one’s affairs in order before immortalizing his last hopes and his last wills in the stone.The large typological variety of the studied territory, between little “Camargue’ and the north of “Catalogne”, of the 11th to the 15th centuries, highlights the local funerary artistic traditions and the northern contributions or the more southern ones in Europe (Spain, Italy) which they integrate. This comprehensive approach of the funeral heritage of the Mediterranean coastline and the society brings a better understanding of religious mentalities, legal practices (wills), and economic (gifts, pious legacy, foundations of chapels and death birthdays) and lastly esthetic ones(sumptuousness, ostentation) at the threshold of the death. The crossing of various written and digital sources (Palissy bases) has led to the development of a fascinating corpus taking into account the monuments that were found again, but also the ones that disappeared, whose traces are found in the old productions.

My dissertation revises our assumptions about the Renaissance commonplace that poetic monuments last longer than marble ones. We tend to understand the commonplace as being about the materiality of artistic media and thus the comparative durability of text and stone. In contrast, I argue that English Renaissance poets and theorists treat the monument of verse as a space where their hopes for the poem’s future converge with broader cultural concerns about the reception of the ancient past and the place of English vernacular poetry within the hierarchy of classical and contemporary European letters. In Renaissance poetics manuals, authors appropriate a newly classicizing architectural vocabulary to communicate confidence in the lasting power of English poetic structures. Through their use of architectural metaphors, they defend their vernacular against charges of vulgar barbarism and promote the civilizing potential of English verse. Yet if lyric poets also turn to architectural metaphors to make claims about poetry’s enduring quality, they simultaneously disclose a deep unease about the perils of textual transmission. Indeed, monumentalizing conceits often appear most powerfully in poetic genres predicated on failed hopes and frustrated desires, that is, in the sonnet sequences and complaints of Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, and William Shakespeare. In acknowledging the fragility of the textual and architectural remains of antiquity, lyric poets from Spenser forward consider their own textual futures with an entirely new sense of urgency. I argue, however, that their unease about the future of their art has as much to do with the genres in which they write and their suspicions about the shifting reading practices of future audiences as it does with the material vulnerability of the medium that transmits that art. In the sonnet sequence in particular, lyric poets who monumentalize their beloved partake in—and anxiously question—early modern practices of constructing funeral monuments for the living. I argue that these poets’ fantasy of entombing those who are still in the prime of their lives turns out to be less about a future rebirth than an obsessive, premature preparation for death. / text

Les représentations monumentales de la Mise au tombeau du Christ constituent l’un des sujets de prédilection en sculpture aux XVe et XVIe siècles. Longtemps, leur historiographie s’est contentée d’observations stylistiques sans marquer d’intérêt concernant les raisons de leur popularité. Pourtant, l’émergence de ce motif iconographique bien particulier – sans référent direct dans les Écritures – ainsi que la grande diversité des lieux d’implantation (cathédrale et église paroissiale, chapelle seigneuriale ou d’hôpital), allant de pair avec celle des donateurs, incitent à un examen attentif des contextes de commande, d’un point de vue historique, politique, économique mais aussi intime. À partir de l’examen de dossiers choisis pour leur pertinence et la richesse de leur documentation, cette étude propose plusieurs ensembles de réflexions articulés autour des notions de monument funéraire, de l’image de dévotion et de pèlerinage spirituel. Elle met ainsi en lumière l’exceptionnelle polyvalence de ces remarquables groupes sculptés. / The monumental representations of the Christ’s entombment were one of the most sought after sculpted subjects during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Their historiography has long been confined to mere stylistic observations without tackling the issue of the reasons for their immense popularity. However, the emergence of such a distinctive iconographic motif – one that stems from no direct reference in the Scriptures – as well as the great diversity of its locations (cathedral and parish churches, castle or hospital chapels), one which mirrors that of their donators, should lead us to a careful examination of the command contexts, from a historical, political, economic as well as personal viewpoint. By examining several examples chosen for their relevance and their wealth of documentation, the present study offers several chapters of reflections hinging upon such notions as a funeral monument, a devotion image and a spiritual pilgrimage. It thus casts light upon the outstanding polyvalence of these remarkable sculpted groups.