Modern critical works on the seventeenth-century Extremaduran author Catalina Clara Ramírez de Guzmán are sparse, with the exception of recent interest manifested by a small group of feminist scholars in the United States. Apart from intermittent mentions of her poetry, she is virtually unknown among British Hispanists. This thesis seeks to fill many existing gaps in knowledge on her by providing a broader critical assessment of her surviving poetry than has been available thus far, particularly by situating it and its author within their historical, literary and social contexts and drawing thematic and stylistic analogies with works by other authors, male and female. Part I will concentrate primarily on historical aspects. It will establish the reputation enjoyed by the poet in her day and review references to her work in modern critical literature. It will also provide a detailed reconstruction of the poet's family antecedents and discuss the evidence of a literary community in her home city during the period in which she was active as a writer. Part II will focus on the poetry itself, specifically a consideration of the thematic content of a broad representative selection of Ramírez de Guzmán's verses, which were not published until nearly two centuries after her death, and an examination of her interaction with the genres of occasional verse, verse portraiture and burlesque and satirical poetry, all of which will be discussed against the background of their respective traditions.

Modern critical works on the seventeenth-century Extremaduran author Catalina Clara Ramírez de Guzmán are sparse, with the exception of recent interest manifested by a small group of feminist scholars in the United States. Apart from intermittent mentions of her poetry, she is virtually unknown among British Hispanists. This thesis seeks to fill many existing gaps in knowledge on her by providing a broader critical assessment of her surviving poetry than has been available thus far, particularly by situating it and its author within their historical, literary and social contexts and drawing thematic and stylistic analogies with works by other authors, male and female. Part I will concentrate primarily on historical aspects. It will establish the reputation enjoyed by the poet in her day and review references to her work in modern critical literature. It will also provide a detailed reconstruction of the poet¿s family antecedents and discuss the evidence of a literary community in her home city during the period in which she was active as a writer. Part II will focus on the poetry itself, specifically a consideration of the thematic content of a broad representative selection of Ramírez de Guzmán¿s verses, which were not published until nearly two centuries after her death, and an examination of her interaction with the genres of occasional verse, verse portraiture and burlesque and satirical poetry, all of which will be discussed against the background of their respective traditions.

This dissertation deals with how the concept of virtue (dygd) is used in Swedish occasional poetry addressed to merchants before 1780. Occasional poetry was the major kind of literature in Sweden in the seventeenth and the eighteenth century, and usually addressed to the nobility and other dominant groups. As a part of the elites’ conspicuous consumption, and mainly aimed to demonstrate the addressees’ virtue, it played an important role in legitimising the social and political dominance of the elite. Merchandise, however, was regarded with moral suspicion. The main purpose of the thesis is to study the argumentative strategies the poets use to honour merchants, and to determine in what ethical traditions they have found the arguments to back up their reasoning. It is thereby possible to detect subtle changes in how they use the concept of virtue. These strategies and arguments are seen from a rhetorical point of view; the poets’ main purpose was to praise the tradesmen persuasively. The dissertation consists of three parts, dealing with, respectively, the period before 1650, the years 1670–1680 and the period 1770–1780. Each part is divided into three chapters: a brief presentation of the main ethical discussion of the period, a concise examination of the occasional poetry written for groups other than merchants, and an analysis of the argumentative strategies used in honouring tradesmen. The earliest merchant prints are constructed as defences rather than actual complimentary poems. Whereas the poems written for other addressees mainly make use of an Aristotelian concept of virtue, focusing on the services done for society and on the honour that follows from this, the merchant poems take a Lutheran law conception of ethics as their starting point. The key point is to claim that the merchant in question has not broken the Ten Commandments, or any other law belonging to man. Neither has he ever done any harm to his neighbours. In the 1670’s, this argumentative strategy is still abundant, but the poets also claim that the merchants have contributed to society, either through Christian charity or, with an allusion to mercantilism, by always trading with the aim of enriching their fatherland. In some cases, economic success in itself is regarded as a ground for honouring the merchant, the claim being that this was necessary for his charity, or by reference to the Lutheran ethics of calling or vocation. A main point is that the poets sometimes use the word virtue to describe these qualities, thereby in effect widening the concept itself. In the 1770’s, all earlier argumentative strategies are still used by the poets. In some cases, however, the texts consist in an attack on the Aristotelian concept of virtue. The poets argue that virtue is an inner, almost invisible quality having nothing to do with performing an occupation or belonging to a special social stratum. Instead they focus on sincerity as a quality essential to real virtue and as an important virtue in itself, thereby also claiming that virtue and glory could and should be separated.

Dans la France du XVIe siècle, la justice traque l’hérésie chez les auteurs et les imprimeurs attirés par la Réforme : on connaît les poursuites à répétition contre Clément Marot et l’exécution d’Étienne Dolet sur le bûcher en 1546. Mais cette politique répressive ne se limite pas à ces condamnations tristement célèbres, ni aux seuls sujets touchant la foi. Plusieurs autres poètes, connus et méconnus, sont mis en cause pour leurs compositions religieuses, mais aussi satiriques, voire, dans quelques cas isolés, obscènes. Les contentieux portant sur la propriété littéraire mettent également aux prises les différents acteurs de la fabrication du livre. Il s’agit alors de comprendre comment de telles contraintes judiciaires ont pu déterminer l’écriture de la poésie à la Renaissance. Il faut d’abord reconstituer les opérations de censure des textes poétiques, depuis le repérage du texte suspect jusqu’à l’interrogatoire du poète, en passant par l’octroi de l’autorisation d’imprimer ou l’enquête sur les vers satiriques placardés aux carrefours de la ville. On prend ainsi la mesure du régime de contrôle auquel les poètes font face en tentant de défendre leur liberté d’écrire – droit à la satire, droit de chanter leur foi, liberté de jouer avec les codes de la poésie érotique. Aussi l’idée de liberté d’expression ne leur est-elle pas si étrangère qu’on pourrait le croire, car ils peuvent donner un sens politique à la notion de « licence », qui, d’ordinaire, justifie les excentricités du langage poétique. Grâce à l’écriture, les poètes essaient de faire avancer leurs procès et se réapproprient leur expérience de la justice : ces usages spécifiques font de la poésie judiciaire l’équivalent d’un genre à la fois en prise avec le réel et ouvert aux échappées irréelles de la réécriture des événements. / In XVIth century France the legal system hunts down heresy among the writers and printers attracted by the Reformation. Some well-known examples are the repetitive legal actions against Clément Marot and the execution of Étienne Dolet, burned at the stake in 1546. But this repressive policy was not limited to only these sadly famous cases, nor to matters of religious faith. Many other poets, famous and unknown, are put on trial because of their religious, satirical, and, in a pair of isolated cases, even obscene writings. Moreover the various actors implicated in the making of the book confront each other in some cases concerning literary ownership. This study aims to understand how such legal constraints influenced the writing of poetry in the Renaissance. The first steps are to reconstruct the process in which poetic texts were censored, from the identification of the suspicious text to the interrogation of the poet, including the licensing of the book and the investigation of satirical verses posted at town intersections. This is the system of control which poets stand up against, attempting to defend their freedom of speech, –the right to write satire and to sing their religious beliefs, the freedom to play with the codes of erotic poetry. In fact, the idea of freedom of speech is not so foreign to them as we could think, as they give political meaning to the notion of « license », which ordinarily justifies the excentricities of poetic language. Through their writing, poets try to advance their cause and to reappropriate their experience of the law : these specific goals make legal poetry a genre of its own, both in dealing with the reality and in recreating the events in an unrealistic manner.

Resitué dans le contexte original, L’Écrit Beaubourg, le mot «moviment » s’avère emblématique des pratiques poétiques de Ponge. ll incarne en un seul mot deux éléments fondamentaux 1 le jeu de décalage et de rapprochement des choses différentes, et la matérialité du moyen d’expression. Sous le principe de l’éloge paradoxal, ces caractéristiques permettent la synthèse textuelle des éléments contradictoires, notamment le temps et l’espace, l’abstrait et le concret. Ajouté à cette animation intellectuelle, les textes se meuvent dans leur composition comme un corps organique, en tant que composants fragmentaires de l’œuvre du poète. Dans les écrits sur l’art, Ponge procède également à l’éloge paradoxal en corrélation avec son appréhension de l’art plastique qui transforme l’émotion temporelle et personnelle en matière substantielle et communicative. C’est justement dans ces «poèmes de circonstance>> que se manifestent ses poétiques les plus contradictoires, celle de l’abstraction concrète et concise, et celle de la monumentalité dans le mouvement. Entre l’épaisseur des mots et la surface plane de la page, le poète les met en œuvre particulièrement dans ses journaux poétiques sur les objets d’espace 1 La Fabrique du pré et La Table. Suggérant la forme musicale « moment », et la forme spatiale parallélépipédique par le segment « ment », le « moviment » concrétise la poésie à trois dimensions, qui, à l’instar du Centre Pompidou, conserve la mémoire collective langagière en la renouvelant sans cesse par le biais de l’incitation à la mise en pratique de la parole. / Replaced in its original context, L Ecrit Beaubourg, the word “movement” appears to be a symbol of Ponge’s poetical practice. ln one only word it associates two fundamental elements: a play with the divergence and association of various things, and the materialism of the expression mode. On the basis of the paradoxical praise, these characteristics allow the making of a textual synthesis of contradictory elements, in particular of time and space, of the abstract and the concrete. Added to this intellectual vitality, the texts evolve in their composition like an organic body, as fragmentary constituents of Ponge’s work. ln his writings on art, he carries out also the paradoxical praise in accordance with his approach of plastic arts which convert temporal subjective emotions into substantial communicable materials. lt is precisely in his ‘poemes de circonstance’ (occasional poems) that his most contradictory poetics appear: that of concrete concise abstraction and that of monumentality in movement. ln between the thickness of the words and the flat surface of the pages, Ponge makes use of them particularly in his poetic diaries: La Fabrique du pré and La Table. Suggesting the musical form “moment”, and the parallelepiped spatial form by the segment “ment”, “movement” embodies the three-dimensional poetry, which keeps, as the Pompidou Center, the collective memory of words, revitalizing it constantly through the encouragement to practical applications of language.

Vestiges de magnificences réputées diaprées, les vers produits à l'occasion des fêtes de cour de la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle ont longtemps été considérés comme des objets littéraires dépourvus de tout intérêt. Et pourtant la génération de la Pléiade, bien plus connue aujourd’hui pour ses recueils poétiques devenus classiques, a aussi été à l’origine d’une poésie impromptue qui a donné au poète un rôle fondamental de maître des plaisirs de la cour. Non content de rester à son pupitre ou dans sa « librairie », le poète devait prendre en charge la mise en scène de ses compositions, jouer parfois le rôle de l’un des personnages et travailler en collaboration avec d’autres artistes, d’une manière non plus solitaire mais tout à fait collégiale. Sa poésie non seulement agrémente la fête mais la colore, la suscite et la structure : des vers chantés aux vers gravés dans les décors ou encore sur des petits billets tombant en cascade sur le monarque au moment de son arrivée, la poésie est omniprésente dans la fête dont elle se fait, à divers niveaux, la « légende. Contribuant à dramatiser et à sacraliser l'histoire de France, cette poésie se développe en outre sur l'esthétique des merveilles qui caractérise les fêtes de cette époque. Enfin les genres poétiques qui y apparaissent (mascarades, momeries, cartels, etc.) s'influencent alors les uns les autres et se développent au carrefour de multiples pratiques poétiques. / The poems written for court festivals in the second half of the Sixteenth century have long been considered unworthy of the attention of scholars of French literature. However, these colourful traces of famously splendid court festivities involved many of the poets of the generation of the “Pléiade”, remembered today mostly for its classic collections of poetry. Nonetheless, these poets also participated in the practice of composing impromptu poetical pieces, which effectively made them the masters of court entertainment. These poets did not restrict their activities to their study or their “librarie”, but designed the sets and organised the saging of their masques – sometimes even playing some of the parts – and collaborating with other artists. The part played by the poet in these festivals is far from being solitary: it is essentially collaborative. His verses are not a mere ornament of the festivities, but are their very life, giving them shape and colour. Poetry plays a part in all aspects of the festivals at court: it is sung, but also inscribed on elements of the décor and showered down on the monarch when he arrives. In this sense, poetry is the “légende” of the celebrations, serving as a caption and as a way creating a legendary, sacred and dramatic representation of power. This poetry also participates in the aesthetic of the maraviglia characteristic of manneristic and baroque festivals. The poetic genres that they involve (masques, mummeries, cartels etc.) mutually influenced each other and developed as hybrid forms which were grew out of the intertwining of many different poetic traditions.

Le premier conflit mondial qui met fin à l’après-midi doré de l’époque édouardienne signe l’entrée du Royaume-Uni dans le XXe siècle politique et esthétique. La place unique qu’occupe la Grande Guerre dans l’imaginaire collectif britannique participe de l’engouement populaire que suscite encore aujourd’hui la war poetry, devenue un véritable « lieu de mémoire » textuel. Son importance dans le paysage culturel britannique paraît dès lors démesurée par rapport à la place qu’elle occupe dans le canon poétique du XXe siècle. À la fois conservatrice et innovante, respectueuse des formes mais sujette à l’expérimentation, l’œuvre des war poets, souvent confondue avec celle des Georgian poets, se range du côté des modernes plutôt que des modernistes. Poésie de circonstance définie par le moment et le lieu d’écriture, elle est jugée à l’aune de la problématique moderne de l’œuvre « impure », poésie tournée vers la révélation de l’événement plutôt que vers l’acte de création. C’est cette tension entre l’appel du monde et l’appel du texte qui fonde la définition générique, esthétique et éthique de la war poetry. Son intérêt critique réside dans sa double finalité, son hybridité tonale, générique et formelle, sa nature composite et polymorphe qui l’inscrivent de plain-pied dans le registre de la dissonance, propre à la poésie moderne. / By putting an end to the golden Edwardian afternoon, the First World War propelled Britain into the political and aesthetic twentieth century. Owing to the unique place occupied by the Great War in the collective British mind, war poetry represents today a highly popular textual “realm of memory”. However, its relevance in Britain’s cultural landscape does not correspond to its status within the poetic canon of the twentieth century. Both conservative and innovative, intent on codified forms yet experimental in nature, often confused with Georgian Poetry, war poetry leans towards the modern rather than the modernist definition of poetry. As a form of occasional writing, determined by the place and time from which it sprung, war poetry is judged according to the modern standards of “impure poetry”, more focused on the revelation of the event than on the act of creation itself. It is the contradictory claims of world and text that found the generic, aesthetic and ethical definition of war poetry. Its critical interest resides in its dual purpose, its tonal, generic and formal hybridity, its complex and changing nature, which firmly inscribe it within the modern poetics.