Le groupe surréaliste s'est livré, dès son éclosion, à un travail critique sans cesse développé au cours de l'entre-deux-guerres. La thèse se fonde sur un corpus de plus de 500 textes publiés par les poètes surréalistes entre 1917 et 1939. A vocation critique et de formes diverses, ces textes répondent à la qualification éditoriale actuelle d'écrits sur l'art. Ce corpus méritait d'être réuni et analysé davantage que pour la dimension subversive ou fantaisiste pour laquelle ils étaient considérés jusqu'à présent. La thèse identifie et analyse les enjeux que ces écrits ont représenté dans l'histoire du mouvement surréaliste notamment au moment crucial de son émergence. / From its birth, the surrealist group is engaged in a critical practice constantly developed during the interwar years. The thesis is based on a corpus of more than 500 texts published by surrealist poets between 1917 and 1939. With their critical vocation and their diverse forms, these texts can be called by the current editorial qualification of writings on art. This corpus deserved to be combined and analyzed for more than the subversive or imaginative dimension for which they were considered up to now. The thesis identifies and analyzes the stakes that these writings represented in the history of the surrealist movement in particular at the crucial moment of its emergence.

Le roman d’aventures anglais du dix-neuvième siècle, héritier d’une tradition issue des écrits de Defoe, de Scott, et de Dumas, trouvera ses chefs-d’œuvre dans L’île au trésor et Enlevé! de Robert Louis Stevenson. Ces textes représentent à la fois l’apogée du genre, et sa réécriture, sa subversion. Joseph Conrad, dans ses fictions aventureuses, répond à cette remise en question des conventions génériques. Les deux auteurs doivent se situer par rapport aux débats littéraires de leur époque, et à la prédominance du réalisme qui touchait à sa fin. En France, au tournant du vingtième siècle, les critiques littéraires cherchent une alternative dans la fiction étrangère au roman moribond qu’ils voient autour d’eux. Face à cette « crise du roman », Marcel Schwob trouvera, en Robert Louis Stevenson, l’auteur qui lui semble donner forme, dans ses œuvres, à un roman d’aventures qui dépasse les oppositions stériles qui alimentent le débat sur l’avenir du roman en France. Cette rencontre littéraire est le point de départ d’une réflexion qui se poursuit dans les années 1900 dans les revues littéraires, où les critiques menés par André Gide commencent à élaborer une théorie du roman d’aventures. Ce concept de l’aventure permet d’étudier la réception de l’œuvre de Stevenson, et de celle de Conrad, dans la culture littéraire spécifique de la France au début du vingtième siècle. Dans la correspondance, les revues telles que La Revue des Deux Mondes, Le Mercure de France, La Nouvelle Revue Française, les traductions, et les éditions françaises des deux écrivains, un phénomène littéraire se dessine, un transfert culturel entre les grands écrivains cosmopolites de la période. / The English adventure novel of the nineteenth century, descending from a tradition shaped by the writings of Defoe, Scott, and Dumas, was to find its masterpieces in Tresaure Island and Kidnapped! by Robert Louis Stevenson. These texts represent both the high-point of the genre, and its rewriting and subversion. Joseph Conrad, in his adventurous fiction, responds to this problematizing of the conventions of the genre. Both authors had to situate themselves in relation to the literary debates of their era, and the soon-to-end dominance of realism. In France, at the turn of the twentieth century, literary critics were seeking an alternative in foreign fiction to the moribund novel that they had inherited. In the face of the this “crisis of the novel”, Marcel Schwob was to find, in Robert Louis Stevenson, the author who seemed to give form, in his fiction, to a novel of adventure which transcended the stale oppositions which had fed the debate on the future of the novel in France. This literary encounter is the starting point for a discussion which continued into the 1900s in the literary reviews, where critics led by André Gide begin to develop a theory of the roman d’aventures. This concept of adventure permits us to examine the reception of the works of Stevenson, and those of Conrad, in the literary culture specific to France at the beginning of the twentieth century. In writers’ correspondence, in literary reviews such as the Revue des Deux Mondes, the Mercure de France, or the Nouvelle Revue Française, in translations and French editions of the two authors, a literary phenomenon takes shape, a cultural transfer between the great cosmopolitan writers of the period.

ENG Esotericism and Occultism in the Italian Literature of the Early Twentieth Century The purpose of this research is to bring contribution to the branch of academic studies dedicated to Western Esotericism with aim to clarify the relationship between this literary field and culture in general. Numerous studies were made in this area of research, specifically tackling the influence of Esotericism on modern and contemporary literature. The goal was to show, in particular, the contribution Italian authors had to establishing of esoteric directions in literature, throughout a limited time-span (last decades of the 19th until the early 20th century). The research, based mainly upon concrete examples and documented resources, portrays the attempt of many writers and entire cultural trends in Italy, during the period considered, to adopt an original approach to expressing themselves, one which will in turn help them to overcome the literary boundaries of that time. This direction found fruitful ground and rooted itself in the esoteric culture, the occult sciences, in the lyrical dimension of dreams and of the unconscious. This study shows the relationship between esotericism and Italian science and culture scene between "fin de siècle and avant-garde", with emphasis on the undeniable influence the...