Cette thèse tient le pari de retracer la persistance dans l’Histoire de la poésie française d’une notion forgée par Stéphane Mallarmé : dans la "Bibliographie" des Divagations, l’écrivain affirme publiquement avoir recueilli ses "poèmes critiques". Après avoir exploré quelles formes nouvelles ce terme recouvre, quelles "transpositions mentales" du poète ces textes déploient, le travail s’affronte immédiatement à la difficulté d’utiliser le même concept pour désigner toute écriture critique inspirée, ce qu’on lit chez Leger félicitant Jacques Rivière. L’influence de ce dernier sur la critique professionnelle enjoint de réserver alors le poème critique aux poètes : l’examen des inventions d’Aragon, Ponge et Du Bouchet permet de poser les questions de la valeur de ces textes marginaux, de leur reprise possible, et de la voix du poète dans le champ théorique. Ensuite, un troisième moment a pour ambition de penser conjointement des procédures qui affrontent la définition impossible du poème, pour préférer lui tourner autour, le déborder, le doubler, le réduire. On observe la génération qui gravite autour de Claude Royet-Journoud pour élaborer une poétique de ce genre indéterminé, inséparable d’une réflexion sur la relation : ce méridien tient compte de la "matière de l’interlocuteur". Dans un dernier temps, la thèse propose la lecture d’un poète contemporain, Philippe Beck. Il déduit des œuvres, en particulier de Mallarmé, de quoi continuer l’inscription de l’Histoire de la poésie dans un "poème critique neuf". / This thesis takes up the challenge of recording the recurrent occurrences in the History of French Poetry of an expression, coined by Stéphane Mallarmé : in the "Bibliography", which he adds to his Divagations, he publicly asserts that he has collected his "critical poems". After having explored the new shapes this word encompasses, and the "mental transpositions" those texts result in, the development tackles right away the issue of using the same expression in order to designate any inspired critical review, which can be found in a letter from Alexis Leger congratulating Jacques Rivière. His influence on professional literary Criticism seems to suggest the critical poem should be left only to poets: analyzing Aragon’s, Ponge’s and Du Bouchet’s inventions, one can lead an inquiry into the value of these marginal texts, their rewriting and the presence of the poet’s voice in the theoretical field. Then, the ambition of a third part is to think together texts that confront the impossible definition of the poem, and finally choose periphrasis, extension, duplication or digestion. One examines the generation revolving around Claude Royet- Journoud so as to work out a poetics of this undetermined genre, which must comprise a reflexion on the relation : this meridian takes into account the "matter of the interlocutor". At last, the thesis focuses on a contemporary poet, Philippe Beck. He gives reinterpretations of literary works, especially Mallarmé’s ones, in order to carry on writing the History of Poetry in a "brand new critical poem".

L’élégie connaît une vogue manifeste à l’aube de notre modernité, au sein de ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler le préromantisme et le romantisme. Mais cet engouement ne va pas sans susciter de profondes interrogations sur la dimension générique de l’élégie. En effet, depuis son acclimatation en français, l’élégie ne peut plus être définie par le seul critère formel, devenu douteux. En outre, dès l’âge classique, deux dangers minent le genre : sa variété thématique qui gêne sa définition et une évolution sclérosante qui le fige en clichés. Émerge donc le souci de rédimer un certain babélisme de l’élégie et d’en refonder le pouvoir expressif par le recours à la notion plus souple d’ « élégiaque ». La modernité de l’élégie s’adosse à cet héritage problématique et réclame une perspective d’étude résolument historique : la vitalité de l’élégie au seuil du XIXe siècle s’autorise d’une nouvelle saisie du genre, qui promeut l’élégiaque au rang de critère premier, ramenant peu à peu l’étiquette d’élégie à la portion congrue. L’œuvre de Millevoye permet de dater ce point de bascule, qui ouvre la voie à l’élégie romantique, attachée à la notion naissante de « lyrisme » et magnifiée par Lamartine sous les auspices de la méditation. Mais en refondant l’élégie sur l’expressivité élégiaque, la modernité romantique l’a soumise aux aléas des sollicitations du sujet par l’histoire, qui le déstabilisent. D’où un déplacement de l’écriture élégiaque durant la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle, dans le repliement intimiste, le dédoublement parodique et humoristique, ou encore la polyphonie, manifestations diverses d’une remise en cause de la source subjective de la plainte élégiaque. Quand revient à la surface du champ littéraire l’élégie revendiquée comme telle, à l’occasion du traumatisme de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, c’est pour cristalliser en un genre labile les doutes, les deuils et les sourires d’un lyrisme incertain de son propre chant comme de l’existence du sujet qui le hante plus qu’il ne le chante. / The elegy was fashionable at the dawn of modernity, during the periods which are known as Pre-Romanticism and Romanticism. But this infatuation with elegy was not without raising deep questioning on its generic dimension. Indeed since the French had appropriated the genre, the elegy can no longer be just defined by a formal criterion which has become disputable. Furthermore, as early as the classical period, two dangers have been subverting the genre: its wide range of themes which is an obstacle to our grasping its quintessence and an evolution at a standstill condemning it to stereotyped perceptions. And from this came the worry to amend the confusion existing around the elegy as well as the urge to revivify its expressive power around the more flexible notion of "elegiac". The modernity of the elegy relies on this problematic heritage and requires a study in historical perspective: the vitality of the elegy at the beginning of the XIXth century allowed itself to provide a new interpretation of its genre that promoted the elegiac as a decisive criterion. Millevoye’s works enables us to date this turning point which paved the way to the romantic elegy linked to the rising notion of "lyricism" and glorified by Lamartine under the auspices of meditation. But while revivifying the elegy on elegiac expressiveness, romantic modernity compelled with the subject having to respond to historical vagaries that were eventually unsettling. Hence a shifting away from elegiac writing during the second half of the XIXth century into intimist withdrawal, parodic splitting or polyphony, all of them being various utterances of a questioning of the elegiac complaint’s subjective source. When the elegy as such resurfaced the literary scene owing to the trauma of the Second World War, it featured a shifting genre to crystallize the doubts, mournings and smiles of a lyricism as uncertain of its own song as the very existence of a subject that haunted its lines more than he inhabited them.

In this thesis I suggest that the work of the four contemporary poets studied manifests the vital role perceptual experience plays in the creation of literary texts. I engage primarily in the analysis of particular texts in order to argue for a shift in critical focus away from the explicit manipulation or exteriorization of the physical aspects of poetry (for example versification and explicit visual presentation) in order to concentrate on the role sensory aspects of thought play within it. Emphasis is therefore put on the way these poets draw from sensory experience, and the effect this has on the way their poetry functions. A shift away from traditional critical vocabulary is considered necessary in part due to the fact that discussions of the physical aspects of poetry often carry with them a variety of preconceptions concerning the nature of language, thought and the thinking subject. The tendency to pose dividing lines between mind and body, word and image, the physical and non-physical aspects of language has characterized the history of Western thought, and neither literature nor literary criticism have been exempt from the conceptual presuppositions inherent in such binary systems. Here, I consider how the work of Pierre Alferi, Valère Novarina, Anne Portugal and Christophe Tarkos transcends such dualisms, using the analysis of specific works to develop a critical approach that reflects their exploration of the ambiguity of the boundaries that separate different sorts of experience and means of expression. The thesis is therefore structured around the development of three concepts, ‘pensée-vue’, ‘pensée-voix’ and ‘pensée-toucher’, inspired directly by the texts studied, that are intended to indicate the vital role different forms of perception play in both the creation and experience of poetic texts. It is hoped that the development of an approach that emphasizes the connection between thought, perception and creativity will suggest the fertility of a shift in critical focus in domains beyond that of contemporary French poetry.

Lautréamont's Songs of Maldoror in the critical discourse from Breton to Blanchot This thesis presents four different approaches to the work of Isidore Ducasse: in the texts of André Breton, Léon Pierre-Quint, Gaston Bachelard and Maurice Blanchot we observe the critical view of the Songs of Maldoror beginning to shape in the first half of the twentieth century. While the surrealists tend to adore Lautréamont uncritically, allowing no actual evaluation of his work, the other authors try to review his work, not limiting their commentary to enthusiastic praise. Pierre-Quint considers Songs to be an expression of a revolt in the first place, the contents being Maldoror's revolt against God, and the form being Lautréamont's revolt against the conventional use of language. Bachelard utilizes another approach: through a single topic - the bestiary of the Songs - he analyzes the element that in his opinion determines the characteristic animality of Lautréamont's work. Finally, according to Blanchot, the Songs of Maldoror is the ultimate reflection of Lautréamont's life and the writing process itself his way to deal with the traumas of childhood and adolescence. The final chapter compares the different concepts and evaluates the evolution that Lautréamont criticism has gone through from Breton to Blanchot.

Edition commerciale de: Diss. : Berlin : 1995/96. / BA en BAS sans concours. Références bibliographiques p.[307]-321 et index.

Thesis--Groningen, 1925.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 173-186).

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This thesis deals with the representation of the erotic body in the works of the most important authors of French sixteenth-century poetry, particularly those of the Pleiade. By "erotic body" we mean a body that is involved in activities of carnal love, a type of love which is considered, during the Renaissance, as the opposite of a more chaste and spiritual kind of love. Our hypothesis is that the textual representation of such a body is coherent throughout the sixteenth century. Since poetic expression is governed by rules of decency during this period, description of the erotic body cannot be direct; its expression depends on analogy and attenuation techniques. Analogy, besides its allusive quality, creates the image of a body "open" to the cosmos rather than one that is fragmented and hermetic. Beauty holds a central position in the imagery of the erotic body. It is a very conventional beauty whose qualities (white, round, hard and smooth) transform the female form into a veritable statue. On the contrary, ugliness and disease are used to sanction behaviour that would otherwise be seen as reprehensible. The erotic art shown in poetry is framed by orthodox morals that condemn certain acts such as sodomy. The guiding principle is one of moderation. Erotic art is also based upon gestures that are fluid and capricious, quite the opposite of a fixed posture. Gestures are made in varied ways, from biting to tickling. However, kissing is the most important practice; it literally kills and resurrects the lover. The center of Renaissance erotic art is the loving couple, whose relations consist of requital and sometimes also of restraint. The game of feigned resistance allows lovers to reconcile these two extremes and to create an erotic relationship that embraces opposition and collaboration between the sexes. The most sought-after locations in Renaissance eroticism are always the same: bucolic surroundings offering a corner away from others' eyes. Temporality on the other hand is variable: stages of life, seasons, holidays, all lend themselves to carnal love. However, the instant reveals itself as the most erotic moment, not because it allows direct pleasure but because it concentrates desire under the guise of a call to carpe diem or of fictitious times (wishes, prayers), thus offering an imaginary satisfaction.