"Divagation", which can be translated into English as wandering, rambling, ranting or even trespassing, is a literary "intergenre", closely tied to a norm and an interdiction. As an "intergenre", divagation appears in a variety of forms. We notice, however, a few recurrent elements: distance from the norm, movement and a special relationship with time and space. From the point of view of the norm, the subject of "divagation" can be perceived as a rival for the appropriation of a territory while from the point of view of the divagation, he might only be "passing by". As he "divagues" in space, the subject reveals the rhizome nature of that space, in which all points are connected to one another and in which the subject can wander in infinite configurations. Freed from the past and the future, the subject of divagation wanders in the present and his movement becomes a presence. Divagation goes beyond the antagonistic view of the norm and even sometimes embraces "error" as one of its components. The subject of divagation, with his ambiguous nature and consciousness, finds himself "at home" in postmodernity. After 1960, the number of books that claim to be "divagations" raises considerably, which can be explained in part by a hasty interpretation of automatic writing, the vulgarization of psychoanalysis and a major change in the status of madness. After 1970, divagation is often perceived as a "reverie" and is developped in poems with an emphasis on the "I". Another interpretation of divagation, this one closer to biography, also appears in the blog. The ease of publishing texts on the internet, the absence of censorship and the absence of a reading panel play an important role in the process. Examples are taken from diverse works of divagation by Rejean Ducharme, Louis Gauthier, Marc Trillard, Stephane Mallarme and Benjamin Peret amongst others. Particular attention is given to surrealism and pataphysics, each of which has a different way of divagating.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:RICE/oai:scholarship.rice.edu:1911/20623 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Leduc, Natali |
| Contributors | Goux, Jean-Joseph |
| Source Sets | Rice University |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Text |
| Format | 199 p., application/pdf |
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