Cette thèse se propose d’étudier l’expression du mouvement dans la poésie grecque ancienne et plus particulièrement le lien qui unit la mort au mouvement de chute dans la poésie homérique. La question du mouvement apparaît en filigrane dans toutes les études qui se préoccupent de la mort en Grèce ancienne et de ses différentes représentations. À travers non seulement différentes expressions métaphoriques, mais aussi via la chute des corps sur le champ de bataille, la chute de certains objets et le plongeon de différents personnages, le mouvement illustre la mort ou son imminence. Loin de figurer seulement le plongeon de l’âme vers les Enfers, le mouvement de chute figure aussi un large éventail d’états émotionnels et s’avère un moyen efficace d’exprimer des états altérés de conscience, par exemple le passage entre la vie et la mort, le sommeil, la folie et l’ivresse, mais aussi des émotions d’une grande intensité telles que la colère, la douleur et la tristesse. Cette utilisation du mouvement de chute dans la poésie grecque s’exprime dans l’imaginaire poétique, mais également dans les pratiques rituelles recensées dans la poésie homérique. En effet, dans l’Iliade, le mouvement de chute, qui apparaît dans la libation, le serment rituel et les rites funéraires, ne signifierait pas seulement la mort, mais dans certains cas, la mort sans inhumation. Cette découverte nous permet de poser un regard nouveau sur les pratiques rituelles du poème qui mettent en lumière la véritable volonté des Achéens, explicitée au chant 3 (Il. 3. 276-301). Celle-ci consisterait non seulement à tuer les hommes et les enfants, et à mettre les femmes en esclavage, mais aussi à abandonner les corps de leurs ennemis aux éléments et donc de leur refuser l’inhumation, ce qui pose problème dans le contexte religieux de la Grèce ancienne. Le mouvement de chute, à travers le geste de projection, exprime une menace que le public grec devait parfaitement comprendre et qui s’avère centrale pour l’ensemble de l’intrigue. Il apparaît aussi que le mouvement posséderait une « efficacité magique » qui permettrait de déclencher et de sceller un serment. Durant toute l’Antiquité, la signification du mouvement change à travers le temps, s’approfondit, se complexifie et s’il permettait de représenter la mort et la tristesse chez Homère, durant toute la fin de l’époque archaïque jusqu’aux derniers jours de l’Empire romain, le mouvement prend parfois une connotation érotique. En raison de la capacité du mouvement à représenter différents états altérés de conscience et de ses liens étroits avec la mort et le deuil, le plongeon devient alors le modèle exemplaire de la souffrance amoureuse. Cette thèse permet donc d’observer l’évolution d’un motif qui conserve tout au long de l’Antiquité sa dimension mortifère, mais qui, encore aujourd’hui, exprime un lien poétique étroit entre la mort et l’érotisme. / This thesis proposes to study the expression of movement in ancient Greek poetry and particularly the link between death and the physical act of falling in Homeric poetry. The question of movement appears implicitly in all studies concerned with death in ancient Greece and its different representations. Through not only different metaphorical expressions, but also through the fall of bodies on the battlefield, the fall of certain objects and the plunge of different characters, human and divine, the movement illustrates death or its imminence. Far from representing only the plunge of the soul into the Underworld, the falling movement also represents a wide range of emotional states and proves to be an effective way of expressing altered states of consciousness, for example the passage between life and death, sleep, madness and drunkenness, but also emotions of great intensity such as anger, pain and sadness. This use of the movement in Greek poetry is expressed in the poetic imagination, but also in the ritual practices recorded in Homeric poetry. Indeed, in the Iliad, the movement of fall which appears in libation, ritual oath and funeral rites would not only mean death, but in certain cases, death without burial. This discovery allows us to take a new look at the ritual practices of the poem which bring to light the true will of the Achaeans, explicitly shown in the third book (Il. 3. 276- 301), which is not only to kill men and children, and to enslave women, but to abandon the bodies of their enemies to the elements and thus to refusing them burial, which is problematic in the religious context of the ancient Greece. The falling movement, through the gesture of projection, expresses a threat that the Greek audience had to fully understand and is central to the entire plot. It also appears that the movement would possess a "magical efficiency" which would make it possible to trigger and seal an oath. Throughout Antiquity, the meaning of the movement through time became more complex and if it represents death and sadness in Homer, throughout the end of the archaic period until the last days of the Roman Empire, the movement eventually took an erotic connotation. Because of his capacity to represent various altered states of consciousness and its close links with death and mourning, the plunge then becomes the exemplary model of the suffering in love. This thesis thus makes it possible to observe the evolution of a motive which preserves throughout Antiquity its mortiferous dimension, but which, even today, expresses a close poetic link between death and eroticism.

Mémoire en recherche-création. / Ce mémoire est un journal de création intime et introspectif. Il s’intéresse aux doutes et difficultés qui peuvent ponctuer la vie de création. Et cette vie, c’est un ensemble complexe, habité par des préoccupations et phénomènes contradictoires : ombre/lumière, intimité/vie publique, solitude/exposition, émission/réception, dedans/dehors. Le filon, derrière tous ces questionnements, est cette recherche d’unité dans la vie de création ainsi que la pacification du processus créatif. Le premier chapitre de ce mémoire s’intéresse à cette tension entre les aspects intérieurs et extérieurs liés à la vie de création. Le deuxième chapitre décrit les outils musicaux utilisés dans les compositions réalisées pendant cette maîtrise et qui font écho aux réflexions exprimées dans le premier chapitre. Y sont abordés, entre autres choses, la narrativité en musique, le jeu sur les hauteurs, la pulsation, l’écriture filmique. Enfin, le troisième chapitre s’intéresse au processus de création, au propos, ainsi qu’au bilan autour des trois œuvres présentées dans le cadre de ce mémoire Abîmes, Rainbow Odyssey : La rédemption et Flots. À-travers le survol de toutes ces préoccupations sont esquissés les contours d’enjeux majeurs ayant tous influencé à leur manière la musique composée durant cette maîtrise. / This essay is an intimate and introspective creation diary. It is about the doubts and difficulties that can punctuate the artistic life. And this life is a complex whole, inhabited by contradictory preoccupations and phenomena: shadow/light, intimacy/public life, solitude/exposure, emission/reception, inside/outside. The vein, behind all these questions, is this search for unity in artistic life as well as the pacification of the creative process. The first chapter of this essay is about this tension between the interior and exterior aspects linked to the life of creation. The second chapter describes the musical tools used in the compositions made during this master's degree and which echo the reflections expressed in the first chapter. It discusses, among other things, narrativity in music, playing with music notes, pulsation, film writing. Finally, the third chapter focuses on the creative process, the subject, as well as the assessment around the three works presented as part of this essay: Abîmes, Rainbow Odyssey: La Rédemption and Flots. Through the overview of all these concerns are sketched the contours of major issues that have all influenced in their own way the music composed during this master's degree.

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Cette thèse propose une réflexion originale sur la construction d’une poétique de l’absence dans le Livro do desassossego (Livre de l’intranquillité) de Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). Plus grande œuvre en prose de l’écrivain portugais, le Livro est une œuvre inachevée et inachevable, en raison tant de sa forme que de son contenu. En fait, c’est la négation du livre, l’anti-livre. Attribuées par Pessoa à son demi-hétéronyme Bernardo Soares, les centaines de fragments tissent en filigrane une quête vers la compréhension de ce qu’est l’absence et des modalités de sa manifestation. Participe à cette quête la réflexion sur l’absence de l’être, dont l’interrogation mobilise le dialogue avec des sources anciennes, notamment chez Parménide, Héraclite et Augustin. L’absence se manifeste aussi dans le moyen entrepris pour l’investiguer : le langage. À ce sujet, l’analyse des piliers de la théologie négative, inaugurée par Pseudo-Denys l’Aréopagite et basée sur le lien avec ce qui est impossible à dire, apporte une perspective décisive pour illuminer la démarche de Pessoa. Pour réfléchir au mystère enfoui dans le Livro, mystère qui est aussi son moteur et l’essence de la parole, l’herméneutique de certains passages de la Bible s’avère un important atout, notamment dans la question concernant le nom de Dieu. Ma thèse démontre que, comme dans les Écritures, le Livro porte un nom secret. Dans ce contexte, en comprenant la place de l’absence dans le langage de Pessoa, la thèse évoque la théorie kabbalistique du langage chez Gershom Scholem, dans laquelle le nom de Dieu et l’essence de la parole recèlent et révèlent à la fois. Cette absence se déploie aussi dans le questionnement d’une subjectivité poreuse et plurielle, qui se heurte à des énigmes existentielles et articule l’absence du je. Cette thèse met en exergue également le lien explicite entre l’absence et l’amour : le rapport à l’absence, surtout l’absence de l’autre, produit des sentiments. Du rapport affectif à l’absence surgit l’amour, qui comporte un surplus, un élan. Comme chez Dante, l’amour chez Pessoa se déplie dans l’espace de la distance et dans la jouissance d’un affect irréalisable. À travers la parole poétique, Pessoa quête l’absence par, dans et du langage. / This thesis proposes an original interpretation regarding the construction of a poetics of absence in the Livro do desassossego (Book of Disquiet) by Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). A major prose work by the Portuguese writer, the Livro is a work unfinished and unfinishable, both in form and content. In fact, it runs counter to the book; it is an anti-book. Hundreds of fragments assigned by Pessoa to his half-heteronym Bernardo Soares weave a search towards the meaning of absence and the ways it manifests itself. Such searching includes thoughts on the absence of being, whose interrogation calls for a dialogue with ancient sources, especially Parmenides, Heraclitus and Augustine. The absence also manifests itself in the medium used to investigate it: language. In that regard, the analysis of negative theology’s main ideas, initially articulated by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and based on the link with what cannot be said, offers a decisive perspective for illuminating Pessoa’s project. In thinking about the hidden mystery in the Livro, a mystery that is both its source and the word’s essence, the hermeneutics of certain passages of the Bible offer a crucial advantage, in particular when the name of God is discussed. My thesis demonstrates that, as in the Scriptures, the Livro carries a secret name. In this context, in understanding the place of absence in Pessoa’s language, the thesis evokes Gershom Scholem’s kabbalistic theory of language in which the name of God and the word’s essence conceal and reveal at the same time. Such absence also appears in the questioning of a porous and plural subjectivity, which comes up against existential enigmas and articulates the absence of the self. In the same vein, this thesis emphasizes the link between absence and love: being attached to absence, mainly the absence of the beloved, produces feelings. From this affective link to absence comes love, which also leads to a surplus and an elan. As with Dante, for Pessoa love comes about at a distance and in the joy of unrealizable affect. By means of poetic expression, Pessoa searches the absence of language, through language and inside language. / Esta tese propõe uma reflexão original sobre a construção de uma poética da ausência no Livro do desassossego, de Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). Mais importante obra em prosa do escritor português, o Livro é uma obra inacabada e inacabável, em razão tanto de sua forma quanto de seu conteúdo. É, na verdade, a negação do livro, um anti-livro. Atribuídas por Pessoa a seu semi-heterônimo Bernardo Soares, as centenas de fragmentos tecem em filigrana uma busca rumo à compreensão do que é a ausência e das modalidades de sua manifestação. Participa desta busca a reflexão sobre a ausência do ser, cuja interrogação mobiliza o diálogo com fontes antigas, notadamente Parmênides, Heráclito et Santo Agostinho. A ausência também se manifesta no meio utilizado para a investigar: a linguagem. Sobre este assunto, a análise dos pilares da teologia negativa, inaugurada por Pseudo-Dionísio Areopagita e baseada na relação com aquilo que é impossível dizer, oferece uma perspectiva decisiva para iluminar o projeto de Pessoa. Para refletir sobre o mistério escondido no Livro, mistério que é também seu motor e a essência da palavra, a hermenêutica de algumas passagens da Bíblia se confirma como uma importante vantagem, principalmente na discussão sobre o nome de Deus. Minha tese demonstra que, como nas Escrituras, o Livro carrega um nome secreto. Neste contexto, entendendo o lugar da ausência na linguagem de Pessoa, a tese evoca a teoria cabalística da linguagem segundo Gershom Scholem, na qual o nome de Deus e a essência da palavra tanto ocultam quanto revelam. Esta ausência se desenvolve também no questionamento sobre uma subjetividade porosa e plural, que se confronta com enigmas existenciais e articula a ausência do eu. Esta tese também destaca o elo explícito entre a ausência e o amor: a relação à ausência, sobretudo a ausência do outro, produz sentimentos. Da relação afetiva à ausência surge o amor, que comporta um excedente, um élan. Como se percebe em Dante, o amor em Pessoa se desdobra no espaço da distância e na experiência de um afeto irrealizável. Por meio da palavra poética, Pessoa busca a ausência da, dentro e através da linguagem.

曾幾何時，廣告在流行文化中已跳脫直接而露骨的銷售意圖，不論是電視廣告的表現形式，抑或報章雜誌的平面廣告，都歷經相當之變革。除了多姿多彩的圖像，更操弄了豐富的語言策略，甚且如詩一般的語言，融入文學新意，產生前所未有的廣告文學性。針對這樣的趨勢變遷，本文旨在透過以社會語用及批判性取徑（a sociopragmatic and critical approach）為主的言談分析（discourse analysis），為廣告文化在作者（／說者）和讀者（／聽者）間的溝通所扮演的角色提供一質性研究。嘗試從語言使用（language use）的層面來觀察：如何喚起群體意識？哪些是常用的語言策略？使用這些語言策略／修辭手段能給讀者帶來什麼樣的效應？這些語言使用伴隨著什麼樣的社會意義？分析架構植基於「攸關性理論」（Relevance Theory, Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995)，從讀者花費處理訊息的精力（processing efforts）審視其所能獲致的效果（contextual effects）。在另一方面，如同Sperber & Wilson（1995: 279）對於往後研究的期許，本研究更在語用分析中加入了社會文化認知和情境的考量，此正亦批判語言學家們的主要關切（Fairclough, 1995）。 分析語料取材自誠品書店所發表的系列廣告文案，係著眼於下列幾個明顯的現象：（一）文中採取豐富嶄新的語言策略，包括了隱喻、姓名／名稱的平行、重複與敘事，這些修辭手段常更能喚起讀者的注意和興趣，產生詩歌性（poetic effects）等認知效果，並表現各樣的語用／溝通功能。（二）大量西方文明裡的名字／名稱巧妙而生動地運用在這些廣告裡，涵蓋人名（藝術家／作家／詩人／名人）、地名、文學藝術名作和知名品牌。（三）對於作者而言，他們可以蘊含更多的情感、態度、情緒和感覺於其中，產生溝通裡的的弱式效果（weaker effects of communication, Wilson & Sperber, 1992），也能規避一些較為嚴肅的社會責任；而就讀者來說，這些語言策略得以預留更寬闊的詮釋空間，更吸引讀者。（四）除了使用這些語言策略來表現文學性，作者並藉由與讀者間的認知環境，利用流行話題與生活經驗，傳達了知識建構、同儕情誼、精英主義、女性意識、人文關懷、都會城市中產階級的生活型態，展現流行文化中的多元文化交融以及外語的強勢霸權地位，反映了傳統的／已改變的／變遷中的文化價值觀，邀請讀者認可這些顯著的意識型態與跨文化價值觀，進而形塑文化多元的認同和社會認知，呼應言談與社會／文化間的雙向關係（dialectical relationship, Fairclough, 1995）。誠品書店一再發表的系列文宣，雖然無法同電視廣告般在日常生活中與讀者（／聽者）的密集式接觸，然卻能在充裕的版面裡，在微觀層次上運用更多的語言策略，也能在宏觀的社會文化認知層次上，透過對流行文化形式與功能的檢視，有助提升其企業形象以臻一文化地標，對於諸如：刻板印象、權力象徵（symbolic power）、社會趨勢與變遷、文化標記（cultural iconicity）與認同、性別角色等討論，提供反思的空間。並對相關議題如「什麼構成了、什麼排除自、以及什麼包含於流行文化之中？」、「是否存在著流行文化記憶？」提供有用的觀察。 / This study aims to propose a pragmatic study along with a critical analysis of the print advertisements of Eslite Bookstore in Taiwan. It explores the audience’s comprehension and interpretation regarding emotions, poetic effects, and storytelling in media communication under relevance–theoretic account (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995; Noveck & Sperber, 2006) by looking into contemporary Chinese print ads released by Eslite. Since poetic effects and storytelling in long texts suitably illustrate the reasoning and pragmatic inference towards emotions via larger units of text processing and inferred implicit meanings, the current study centres on the audience’s inferential processes and pragmatic interpretations over longer texts against institutional discourse, advertising. The audience searches for optimal relevance in the interpretation process, during which a wide array of weak implicatures, based on her greater share of responsibility, could be inferred and derived from the non-literal speech together with the context, depending on the different degrees of involvement and shared cognitive environment. The sociocultural aspect of language use, on the other hand, is further explored to see the inseparable relationship between language and social function. The rhetorical strategies of syntactic parallelism and repetition of name, metaphor, and storytelling are artfully crafted through literary styles within the ads to attract the audience’s attention, to initiate cognitive poetic effects and advertising literariness, and to perform diverse pragmatic/communicative functions. They convey too the dominant ideologies, viz. intellectualism, elitism, social critique of taste, friends’ rapport, feminine awakening, humanistic concern, and the current lifestyles of petit bourgeoisie in urban contexts. The chosen data vastly adopt elegant wordings and stylistic patterns from names of person (artist/writer/poet/celebrity), place, literature, fashion and brand names to deliver aesthetic value. Placing little emphasis on target commodity, they invite and encourage an imaginative audience to actively and cognitively consume the texts and stories, and spell out a variety of weak implicatures involving feelings, attitudes, emotions and impressions along the textual lines. They invisibly persuade her to recognise the significant inter–/cultural values. Positioning the audience as social elite, shaping and branding the corporate image as a cultural polysemy and landmark of cultural empowerment, they also initiate an emergent text genre with communicative innovation in cultural industry and academic disciplines. People in all languages often mean more than they say. Grammar on its own is typically insufficient for determining the full meaning of an utterance, the assumption that the discourse is coherent or ‘makes sense’ has a vital role to play in meaning construction as well. Just as syntactic surface structures display complexity of underlying structures, we can appreciate much the implicit meanings constructed, conveyed and enriched by storytelling and the poetic force of lexical items and syntactic–semantic–pragmatic interplay in media discourse, as shown in the study. This functional linguistic study reveals that the selling motive could well be melted and/or hidden through those communication strategies due to their implicitness, indirectness and vagueness, and clarifies the simplistic dichotomy between Eastern vs. Western cultures. The dialogic relations between form and function in advertising language reflect the social cohesion/interaction and cognitive dynamics of communicator and audience, thus maintaining the dialectical relationship between social structures and social practice (Fairclough, 1995).

By asking the question “How do young, urban, professional Kenyans make connections between tribal identity, colonialism, and the lived experience of nationhood?,” the researcher engages with eight participants in exploring their relationships with their tribal groups. From this juncture the researcher, through a co-constructed process with participants, interrogates the idea of nationhood by querying their interpretations of the concepts of power and resistance within their multi-ethnic societies. The utility of KuPiga Hadithi as a cultural responsive methodology for data collection along with poetic analysis as part of the qualitative tools of examination allowed the researcher to identify five emergent and iterative themes: (1) colonial wounds, (2) power inequities, (3) tensions, (4) intersection, and (5) hope. Participant discussion of these themes suggests an impenetrable link between tribal identity and nationhood. Schooling, as first a colonial and then national construct, works to mediate that link. Therefore, there is the need for a re-conceptualization of the term ‘nation’ in the post-Independence era.

Master of Visual Arts / This Dissertation explores the metaphor of Ariadne’s thread in terms of interconnection, when an element from the everyday is used as a locus linking broader concepts of time and space. Such experiences and associations are reflected in the work of Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Doris Salcedo, Lucio Fontana, Richard Tuttle, Mona Hatoum, Simone Mangos, Anya Gallaccio and Yoshihiro Suda. In relation to my own work, the metaphor of interconnecting thread allows a sense of freedom and journey of discovery. My studio and related research are closely aligned in developing my understanding of interconnection, through my studio process of making and continuing experiences of looking at and interpreting others artists’ work.

Master of Visual Arts / This Dissertation explores the metaphor of Ariadne’s thread in terms of interconnection, when an element from the everyday is used as a locus linking broader concepts of time and space. Such experiences and associations are reflected in the work of Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Doris Salcedo, Lucio Fontana, Richard Tuttle, Mona Hatoum, Simone Mangos, Anya Gallaccio and Yoshihiro Suda. In relation to my own work, the metaphor of interconnecting thread allows a sense of freedom and journey of discovery. My studio and related research are closely aligned in developing my understanding of interconnection, through my studio process of making and continuing experiences of looking at and interpreting others artists’ work.

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La confrontation du théâtre et de la liturgie est un lieu commun de la pensée. Il est un motif rhétorique récurrent chez les pères de l’Église pour définir a contrario et par surenchère le bon ethos du chrétien à l’Église. Ce tour de pensée ecclésiastique, typique de la synthèse augustinienne de la rhétorique antique et du christianisme, n’est pas seulement un héritage livresque au XVIIe siècle. Il est particulièrement pertinent à la vue des enjeux auxquels est confrontée l’Église catholique : elle doit répondre aux accusations protestantes, qui traitaient la messe de farce ; le théâtre renouvelé de l’antique se rétablit grâce au soutien du pouvoir, se sédentarise et devient un divertissement régulier. Cette banalité nouvelle fait de la Comédie, aux yeux des augustiniens, le lieu d’une « représentation vive » et continuelle des passions du monde, particulièrement de l’amour et de l’honneur : le théâtre apparaît comme une liturgie inversée. Là où les pratiques de piété sont censées amoindrir les passions et nourrir la foi, le théâtre excite les passions et étouffe l’esprit de prière. La querelle de la moralité au théâtre montre non seulement une concurrence morale, mais aussi psychique et affective. Les deux représentations prétendent susciter la présence d’esprit et « toucher » le cœur, voire lui « imprimer des mouvements ». La messe est qualifiée de « représentation vive du sacrifice de la croix », pendant laquelle le fidèle doit se remémorer vivement le sacrifice christique et sa signification grâce à une lecture allégorique, et se l’appliquer à lui-même. Par la considération et l’accomplissement de cérémonies, par la vocalisation des psaumes, le fidèle est invité à produire des « actes » du cœur pour s’unir à Jésus-Christ. Ce rapport au texte comme trace à suivre, et ce rapport au corps et à la voix comme media pour s’auto-exciter, expliquent pourquoi les comédiens professionnels sont condamnés par les dévots : ils excitent en eux les passions contraires à l’Esprit saint, ils rappellent des sentiments qu’un pénitent ne pourrait pas se remémorer sans « horreur ». La « représentation » est alors conçue comme un effort de remémoration.Le rétablissement du théâtre à l’antique nécessitait un discours pour en éclairer les visées et en légitimer l’existence dans une société chrétienne et monarchique. Traduire la mimesis aristotélicienne par « représentation » plutôt que par « imitation » rendait le théâtre beaucoup plus proche de la liturgie et lui ajoutait les connotations de vue, de présence et de mémoire. Le débat entre plaire et instruire est un débat entre théâtre-divertissement et théâtre-cérémonie. Incomber au théâtre la fonction d’instruire, c’était le rapprocher d’une prédication et de la messe, car instruire, signifiait instruire chrétiennement. L’échec de sanctification du théâtre des années 1640 fit conclure à une incompatibilité du théâtre avec la folie et la modestie chrétienne, mais la possibilité d’une instruction civique par le théâtre émerge à la fin du siècle. Le théâtre participe de la construction d’une morale laïque. / The confrontation between liturgy and theater is a topos of the discourses which reveal deeply-rooted issues of representation in the seventeenth century. This commonplace had been a recurrent rhetorical device in the patristic sermons, where it emphasized the differences between Christianity and paganism. It is vigorously reactivated in seventeenth-century France as the Catholic Church faces its Calvinist critics, who accuse mass of being a comedy. Profane theater becomes a regular and professional kind of entertainment in the city and at the court, thanks to the protection of the royal power. This is why it is seen by Augustinians as a recurrent “lively representation” of the values of the world, such as love and honor, which are contradictory to the celestial Christian spirit. Treatises against Comedy written by Christian zealots reveal not only a moral, but also an emotional and psychological competition between liturgical practices and theater. Both “representations” try to force the presence of the mind and to touch, or even to print, the heart. The mass is then qualified as the “lively representation” of the Passion of the Christ, during which Catholic prayers must commemorate the mystery of divine sacrifice. By considering and acting out ceremonies, by vocalizing prayers, the believer is invited to produce certain acts of the heart and to unite with Christ, applying the Christ’s sacrifice to himself. Thus, the believer can be assimilated to an existential comedian on the divine stage : he actively involves his sensibility in the imitation of the great Christian model, by entering into the spirit of the psalms. This relationship to the text as a vestige to follow, this use of the voice and the body as mediums to excite devotion, explain the condemnation of the professional comedian by the Christian zealots (dévots). Indeed, the comedian is seen as someone who excites his own passions, playing a dangerous game with his heart and reminding himself of former worldly passions which can only lessen his faith.The reestablishment of theater questions the legitimacy, the definition and the goals of this art in a Christian society. Translating mimesis by “representation” and not “imitation” brought the theater closer to the liturgy. The discourses on theater in the 1620s and 1630s show that the authors tended to see a memorial, reiterative and visual dimension in theater that was not present in Aristotle. The debates finally conclude on the definition of theater as an honest form of entertainment rather than as a living form of instruction, namely because the latter was the responsibility of predication and mass. Saint Thomas could justify theater as a way of merely releasing the mind without interesting the heart or touching the soul ; at that time, indeed, instruction meant Christian instruction. In the 1640s, to please the devout Spanish queen Anne of Austria, several playwrights did attempt to call back the theater to its former institutional position by assimilating it with religious ceremony and creating sanctified tragedies. But this attempt failed for both poetic and political reasons. The disposition of the spectators in the city was not to be instructed. The theater was finally recognized as incompatible with Christian folly and modesty, but slowly participated in the formation of a secular morality in a new civic sphere.