This thesis examines time, death, and choice in Philip Larkin's poetry, arguing that his approach to these themes is not deterministic, but existential. The argument is based on the similarity between Larkin's views and those of three existential philosophers. Larkin's view of time, like Heidegger's, is that men live not in long stretches of time, but in processions of unconnected yet similar moments. A constant underlying sadness, like Kierkegaard's despair, makes each moment reminiscent of death. Like Sartre, Larkin finds meaning in his choices, and struggles to live authentically without expectation. Although Thomas Hardy influenced Larkin, given these similarities, Larkin's poetry cannot rightly be called deterministic. It is an attempt to preserve experience for its own sake.

Throughout her life Christina Rossetti was pursued by the thought of death. Many of her poems, especially her later poems, display her concerns about death. Her early poems show death as the destroyer of mortal things, reflecting her pessimism and her sometimes naturalistic views on life. Her death wish is sometimes associated with her thwarted desire for absolute love in the world. Her religious poems describe death as the gate to heaven or to hell, the final resting place from the pains of her life. Either as her religious yearning for a better place of Resurrection or as her way of expressing her unfulfilled desire in the world, her persistent theme of death is an expression of the conflict between a sometimes skeptical, sometimes religious view.

Stevie Smith's treatment of her two major themes of God and death reveals her seriousness as a poet; although she earned a reputation as a writer of comic verse, she is rather a serious writer employing a comic mask. This thesis explores her two, dominant themes, which reveal her inability to synthesize her views about both subjects. In religion, she proved to be a doubter, an atheist, and a believer. Her attitude toward death, though more consistent, is nonetheless ambiguous, particularly regarding suicide. Smith always considered death as a god, and her examination of both the gods of Christianity and of Death was exhaustive. She never developed a single view of either theme but proved to believe in several conflicting ideas at once.

Poète picard du début du XIIIe siècle, le Reclus de Molliens est l’auteur à de deux textes à teneur morale, religieuse et savante, qui circulent sous les titres de Miserere et Carité. Même si ces deux textes édifiants connaissent une diffusion considérable au Moyen Âge et qu’ils rencontrent une réception plus que favorable auprès de plusieurs générations de lecteurs et d’auteurs anciens, ils ont largement été délaissés, voire négligés par la critique moderne, qui ne leur a accordé aucune monographie depuis la fin du XIXe siècle (Van Hamel, 1885). Si la présente thèse vise en partie à combler cette lacune par le moyen d’une mise à jour des données de base quant à la diffusion et au legs littéraire du Reclus de Molliens, elle propose avant tout une réflexion d’ordre poétique, qui engage de façon active le statut de canon littéraire de l’œuvre. À titre de textes à succès – qui font acte de modèle et d’étalon poétique aux yeux d’un vaste public –, Miserere et Carité paraissent tout désignés pour servir de guide et de point de repère poétique permettant de repenser la vitalité et les codes de la poésie édifiante, à l’aune des critères de jugement et des pratiques de lecture concrètes du public médiéval. La documentation historique liée au Reclus de Molliens révèle que le système de versification adopté dans Miserere et Carité, soit la strophe d’Hélinand (8aabaabbbabba), joue un rôle primordial dans la réception de l’œuvre. Comme il faudra le montrer, les textes en strophe d’Hélinand répondent à une série de règles cohérentes, spécifiques et différenciées (partie I), si bien qu’ils s’apparentent à un système poétique à part entière, doté de son propre « horizon d’attente » et de ses propres conventions de lecture (partie II). Ces règles non écrites, qui semblent directement infléchir la réception de Miserere et Carité, participent également du procès du sens en ajoutant un impact dramatique au propos édifiant (partie III). Dès lors que l’analyse de Miserere et Carité sera ainsi imbriquée à celle de ce corpus formel, il deviendra possible de dégager une poétique du texte édifiant en strophe d’Hélinand, qui sera guidée et balisée par le parfait exemple d’un poète à succès. / The Reclus de Molliens, an early 13th century French poet, is the author of two moralizing, religious and didactic texts known as Miserere and Carité. Despite its wide circulation, as well as its significant influence over subsequent generations of authors and readers, this work has been largely neglected by modern critics: the most recent monograph on Miserere and Carité was indeed published over one hundred thirty years ago (Van Hamel, 1885). The following dissertation aims at filling this gap in research by updating the basic data regarding the circulation and literary legacy of this medieval best-seller. Moreover, it provides a reflection surrounding the poetics of this work, which draws on its status as a part of a forgotten literary canon. The fact that Miserere and Carité were so widely read, and therefore constituted models and poetic benchmarks for a wide audience, makes them ideal case studies to rethink the vitality and the codes of moralizing poetry, based on the actual criteria and reading practices of the medieval audience. The historical documentation pertaining to the Reclus de Molliens reveals that the versification system adopted in Miserere and Carité, known as the Helinandian stanza (8aabaabbbabba), plays a vital role in the reception of his works. As will be demonstrated, works that are composed using this type of verse follow a consistent set of poetic rules (part 1). This means that they constitute a legitimate poetic system, with its own “horizon of expectations” and reading conventions (part 2). These implicit rules, which seem to have impacted the reception of Miserere and Carité, also contribute to the construction of meaning by adding a dramatic impact to their moralizing content (part 3). Once the analysis of Miserere and Carité is thus imbricated in the analysis its “formal family”, it will then be possible to define a poetics of the moralizing text written in Helinandian stanza, guided and framed by this successful poet.