On croyait l’élégie disparue après l’apogée qu’avait connue le genre pendant le Romantisme et après les attaques dont il avait été la cible, les poètes « modernes » ayant choisi de s’affirmer contre les « excès » du lyrisme romantique dont l’élégie était devenue la caricature. Le lyrisme et la poésie de la première personne sont eux-mêmes restés au centre des attaques et des moqueries durant tout le XXe siècle. C’est pourtant à une renaissance du genre que l’on assiste, timide et progressive dans la première moitié du XXe siècle, puis à une véritable recrudescence dans la seconde moitié du siècle. Les noms des plus grands poètes s’associent aux titres de recueils d’élégies : outre les très célèbres Élégies de Duino de Rilke (1923), ce sont par exemple les Élégies de Juan Ramón Jiménez (1908), les Élégies et satires de Karyotákis (1927), les Hollywoodelegien (1942) et les Buckower Elegien (1953) de Brecht, les Élégies de Pierre Emmanuel (1940), de Jean Grosjean (1967), les Élégies d’Oxópetra d’Elýtis (1991), ou encore les trois grands recueils posthumes de Nelly Sachs, Schwedische Elegien (1940), Die Elegien von den Spuren im Sande (1943) et Elegien auf den Tod meiner Mutter (1950). L’élégie, née au VIIe siècle avant J.-C., est bien vivante au XXe siècle. Face à une telle longévité, trois questions se posent, qui structurent notre travail : sous quelles formes et selon quelle(s) définition(s) l’élégie existe-t-elle au XXe siècle ? Comment joue-t-elle des rapports entre modernités et traditions ? Comment se repositionne-t-elle face aux attaques virulentes des détracteurs du lyrisme et par quoi se caractérisent les nouveaux lyrismes qu’elle met en jeu au XXe siècle ? / Elegy is generally believed to have disappeared from European poetry in the XXth century, after a period of apogee during the Romanticism and after the hard criticism that the “modern” poets, who rejected the “excessive” romantic lyricism, leveled at the elegiac poets. Elegy was considered by the former as the emblem of a romantic out-of-date lyricism. Lyricism and the poetry expressed in the first person remained also the target of the attacks and mockery from a part of the XXth century poets and literary critic. Yet a real revival of the genre happens since the very beginning of the XXth century, hesitant and gradual during the first half of the century, then more abundant and obvious in the second part of the period. The names of major European poets of this century are linked with the genre of elegy, and the titles of their works show it: Juan Ramon Jiménez’s Elegías (1908), Rilke’s Duineser Elegien (1923), Karyotákis’ Elegies and satires (1927), Brecht’s Hollywoodelegien (1942) and Buckower Elegien (1953), Pierre Emmanuel’s and Jean Grosjean’s Élégies (respectively 1940 and 1967), Elýtis’s Oxopetra Elegies (1991), or the three posthumous works of Nelly Sachs, Schwedische Elegien (1940), Die Elegien von den Spuren im Sande (1943) et Elegien auf den Tod meiner Mutter (1950). Born in the VIIth century B.C., the genre of elegy is well alive in the XXth. Such a longevity brings us to three questions which organize our research: which are the shapes of the elegy of the XXth century and on which definition(s) of the genre is it based? Which are the connections and balance between traditions and modernity? How does the genre of elegy outlive the attacks against lyricism and what are the characteristics of the new lyricisms which it gives birth to?

This dissertation offers the first extended study of the work of the Welsh-French poet Heather Dohollau, whose substantial œuvre in French, published since 1974, has recently received international critical recognition. My thesis centres on the idea of traversée, which originates in Dohollau’s experience of exiles, returns and bilingualism. My chapters elucidate five interconnected themes which all relate to that overarching paradigm. Chapter 1 focuses on Dohollau’s trajectories as reflected in poems on the memory of place, concentrating on South Wales and the island. The quest for place is also a quest for the past, which is handled as an after-image capable of upwelling into the present. Chapter 2 investigates the visual-verbal bilingualism towards which Dohollau’s texts on specific artworks (or ekphrastic texts) seem to strive. Dohollau revitalizes the ekphrastic tradition and challenges its conventional connotations of power struggle (W. J. T. Mitchell) in favour of a poetics of hospitality. Chapter 3 is dedicated to Dohollau’s ethos and practice of slowness. It undertakes a close-reading analysis of her syntactic and sound-related rhythms, connecting them with Derrida’s différance. The idea of poetry as a foreign language is discussed in chapter 4: Dohollau’s adoption of French as her main poetic language in the mid-1960s, her handling of motherhood and daughterhood, and her quest for a poetics of mourning and fidelity are examined in their interrelations. The concluding chapter explores the boundaries between language and the unsaid. Dohollau has been uniquely placed to engage with postwar reassessments of language and its limits (Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot), poised as she is between languages and media. As her poems show, such limits constitute a poetic resource in their own right. Her carefully cultivated liminal stance has given her important insights into the creative process as a passage into words from an unwritten, yet not utterly inchoate other of the poem.