Crise de la littérature et partage des disciplines
Literature crisis and division of disciplines
Contributor(s): Marie Blaise (Editor), Małgorzata Sokołowicz (Editor), Sylvie Triaire (Editor)
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Studies of Literature, French Literature, Philology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: literature; crisis; divisions; discipline; history
Summary/Abstract: This volume, the result of a conference held in Warsaw in December 2019 as a part of a Franco-Polish research project on crises in literature, focuses on the relationships that the literature maintains with other fields of knowledge. These relationships, made up of sharing, collaboration or tension, were primarily theorized in the 19th century when the founding "disciplines" of our universities and research practices were established, but they had existed before. The texts presented in this volume allow us to verify this, from the Renaissance period to contemporary literature. They deal with historical circumstances and aesthetic changes in the course of which literature has forged links with religious or historical thought and discourse, accompanied the emergence of sociology or ethnography, and prepared new disciplines, such as demography. And it has always reinvested this new knowledge with a humanist and poetic dimension. Does the literature crisis lay in its capacity for reinvestment of what seems to escape from it and aiming at autonomy?
- E-ISBN-13: 978-83-235-4662-7
- Print-ISBN-13: 978-83-235-4654-2
- Page Count: 147
- Publication Year: 2020
- Language: French
Le Moyen Âge: passés recomposés et (in)disciplines
Le Moyen Âge: passés recomposés et (in)disciplines
(The Middle Ages: Composed Pasts and the Lack of Discipline(s))
- Author(s):Marie Blaise
- Language:French
- Subject(s):Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, French Literature, Philology
- Page Range:16-30
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:Middle Ages; 19th century; orders of knowledge; literature; history
- Summary/Abstract:Between flagrant contradictions and successive denials, scholars and artists, unequally, have been constructing the idea of the Middle Ages since the 16th century. Generations were derogatory of the Dark Ages, or the “middle age”, and unflattering texts by Enlightenment philosophers are well known. In the dawn of the 19th century, the idea of Middle Ages appears as both a symptom and a privileged locus for the study of the ruptures and concordances between Classical and Romantic conceptions as, in the mist of the French Revolution, the paradigms that governed history no longer hold. During all the 19th century, reconstructing the Middle Ages blurs the borders between the various orders of knowledge and the new academic disciplines, and opens a via regia to the complex reassessment of literature. Focusing on the choice of the Middle Ages as an “historical other”, this article comments on these disputes in order to assert that, if the medieval period has always been the result of an a posteriori construction, it is as a part of the rise of modernity.
Quelle voix choisir? L’art de l’octonaire et deux poètes protestants: Antoine de la Roche Chandieu et Joseph Du Chesne
Quelle voix choisir? L’art de l’octonaire et deux poètes protestants: Antoine de la Roche Chandieu et Joseph Du Chesne
(Which Voice to Choose? The Art of the Octonaire by Two French Protestant Poets: Antoine de la Roche Chandieu and Joseph Du Chesne)
- Author(s):Dariusz Krawczyk
- Language:French
- Subject(s):Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, French Literature, Philology
- Page Range:31-44
- No. of Pages:14
- Keywords:octave; vanity; religious poetry; Renaissance; Protestant poetics
- Summary/Abstract:Before the fascination for vanity in painting, it existed, in late Renaissance France, a fascination for poetic vanities written by both Catholic and Protestant writers. However, the octonaire – an epigrammatic poem of eight verses that describes the vanity and inconstancy of the world – was invented by Protestant poets. Their poetry had to obey the rhetorical, literary and spiritual imperatives that were to incite the readers to hate the world and seek God. This article compares the book of poems of Antoine de la Roche Chandieu and the one of Joseph Du Chesne to highlight the differences between the two. These differences seem to reflect the tensions in Protestant poetics: between the simplicity of the biblical word and the splendor of the literary tradition.
Entre discours littéraire et discours scientifique – un dilemme de l’auteur d’un récit de voyage: Les Observations de Pierre Belon du Mans
Entre discours littéraire et discours scientifique – un dilemme de l’auteur d’un récit de voyage: Les Observations de Pierre Belon du Mans
(Between Literary Discourse and Scientific Discourse – Author’s Dilemma. Les Observations by Pierre Belon du Mans)
- Author(s):Dorota Szeliga
- Language:French
- Subject(s):Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, French Literature, Philology
- Page Range:46-60
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:Pierre Belon; Levant; travel; Renaissance; Egypt
- Summary/Abstract:The present paper focuses on relationships and tensions between literary and scientific discourses in the following editions of Oriental travel accounts by Pierre Belon du Mans. This French traveller, naturalist and doctor travelled across Greece, Egypt, Jerusalem and Turkey between 1546 and 1549 and, afterwards, published three volumes of Les Observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses memorables, trouvées en Grece, Asie, Judée, Egypte, Arabie, et autres pays estranges. Whereas in the first edition (1553), he put emphasis to dynamics of narration and differentiation between his own adventures and those of other travellers, in the second one (1555), he introduced some major changes, which were to underline the scientific nature of his trip. Those changes show, on one hand, the pressions the author underwent when he wanted to meet the scientific requirements of his times and, on the other hand, a kind of crisis he experienced being trapped between literary and scientific discourses and their stylistics.
Le roman colonial: la crise de la littérature exotique et l’essor de l’ethnographie
Le roman colonial: la crise de la littérature exotique et l’essor de l’ethnographie
(Colonial Novel: the Crisis of Exotic Literature and the Development of Ethnography)
- Author(s):Małgorzata Sokołowicz
- Language:French
- Subject(s):Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, French Literature, Philology
- Page Range:61-73
- No. of Pages:13
- Keywords:colonial novel; ethnography; exotic literature; crisis; Aïssaoua; Aline Réveillaud de Lens
- Summary/Abstract:The aim of the present paper is to show how the crisis of exotic literature, understood as the first type of literature inspired directly by colonies, contributed to the development of ethnography. The paper is divided into three parts. The first one defines exotic literature and analyses the reasons of its crisis. The second presents the main theories concerning colonial novel coming from the beginning of the 20th century; and the last part shows the example of an ethnographic discourse in one of the colonial novels praised by their theoreticians: "Derrière les vieux murs en ruines" by Aline Réveillaud de Lens (1881-1925).
La littérature entre science et ésotérisme: Petrusmok. Mythe (1951) de Malcolm de Chazal
La littérature entre science et ésotérisme: Petrusmok. Mythe (1951) de Malcolm de Chazal
(Literature between Science and Esoterism: Petrusmok. Mythe (1951) of Malcolm de Chazal)
- Author(s):Izabella Zatorska
- Language:French
- Subject(s):Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, French Literature, Philology
- Page Range:74-88
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:colonial Atlantis; Lemuria (Limuria); Petrusmok. Mythe; Malcolm de Chazal; myths about the origins of nations; continental drift; Jules Hermann
- Summary/Abstract:Révélations du Grand Océan [Revelations of the Great Ocean] by Jules Hermann (1846-1924), published posthumously in 1927 and nourishing imagination of some Mauritian writers, were inspired by the scientific theory of continental drift proposed by Alfred Wegener. Hermann imagined an Atlantis of the South, Lemuria, situated between India and Africa and submerged in the wake of a continental cataclysm. He found remnants of this drowned continent, or more precisely he found its linguistic remains, in Malagasy language, which he saw as an avatar of the Lemurian language, and its physical remains in the island of Madagascar, together with the Mascarene islands. After Robert Edward Hart (1891-1954) and his "Cycle de Pierre Flandres" (1928-1936), it was Malcolm de Chazal, a primitivist painter and (surrealist?) poet, or “total artist” (Robert Furlong), who took his inspiration from the “Lemurian myth”. Chazal’s monographer Christophe Chabbert has shown how, for Chazal, and especially in "Petrusmok. Mythe" (1951), the myth becomes inspiration to construct a cosmogony of the islands of the Indian Ocean and to show – artistically and spiritually – their autonomy.
Histoire et littérature: position, disposition, contrefaçon
Histoire et littérature: position, disposition, contrefaçon
(History and Literature: Position, Arrangement, Counterfeit)
- Author(s):Sylvie Triaire
- Language:French
- Subject(s):Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, French Literature, Philology
- Page Range:90-104
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:history; literature; prefaces; relations; Flaubert
- Summary/Abstract:The aim of this paper is to analyse the variation of relations between history and literature in the particular case of the French historic novel of the 19th century. It focuses on some works of Vigny, Balzac, Dumas and Flaubert and shows that most of the time, relations between literature and history range, theoretically and practically, from sharing to partition; except when tension is neutralized in the context of a non-rhetorical and non-didactical literature.
Et si la Vie de Jésus était vraiment un roman? Renan entre histoire et littérature
Et si la Vie de Jésus était vraiment un roman? Renan entre histoire et littérature
(What if the Life of Jesus was really a novel? Renan between History and Literature)
- Author(s):Pierre-Yves Kirschleger
- Language:French
- Subject(s):Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, French Literature, Philology
- Page Range:105-119
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:novel genre; controversy; history; literature; christianism; Ernest Renan
- Summary/Abstract:Ernest Renan’s "Vie de Jésus" [Life of Jesus] was an extraordinary scandal, a literary event. The book is often compared to Victor Hugo’s "Misérables" [The Wretched], one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. Renan’s work seeks to be scientific, but it is frequently considered to be a masterpiece of literature: Renan uses (and abuses) images, poetic imagination, aesthetic reflections, sensitive handwriting… What if the "Life of Jesus" was really a novel?
La «sociologie» balzacienne peut-elle être utile à l’analyse de la Pologne postcommuniste? L’exemple de Balzakiana de Jacek Dehnel
La «sociologie» balzacienne peut-elle être utile à l’analyse de la Pologne postcommuniste? L’exemple de Balzakiana de Jacek Dehnel
(Can Balzacian “Sociology” Be Useful for the Analysis of the Post-communist Poland? The Example of Balzakiana by Jacek Dehnel)
- Author(s):Kamil Popowicz
- Language:French
- Subject(s):Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, French Literature, Philology
- Page Range:120-131
- No. of Pages:12
- Keywords:Balzac; Jacek Dehnel; Balzakiana; French Restoration; Poland; post-communism
- Summary/Abstract:This paper presents a collection of short stories by Jacek Dehnel published under a title "Balzakiana", where the author attempted to depict modern Poland in the same way that Balzac depicted France of the Restoration period in "The Human Comedy". The paper raises questions if the Polish author succeeded in his task and more importantly whether such an endeavor was legitimate i.e. are there sufficient parallels between the two countries in these two very different periods of time? The answers is affirmative since striking similarities are noted between French transition from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period to the restoration of monarchy and Polish transition from communism to democracy. The paper also cites articles from Polish press showing that this parallel has been used by other authors, notably Adam Michnik who reached similar conclusions on his own.
La crise démographique dans l’utopie au XVIIIe siècle
La crise démographique dans l’utopie au XVIIIe siècle
(Demographic Crisis in the 18th-Century’s Utopia)
- Author(s):Stanisław Świtlik
- Language:French
- Subject(s):Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, French Literature, Philology
- Page Range:132-145
- No. of Pages:14
- Keywords:crisis; demography; utopia; populationism; Enlightenment; malthusianism
- Summary/Abstract:The population number on the Earth has been worrying thinkers since the end of the 17th century. The crisis in which we can identify two averse tends, animated literary and intellectual exchanges during all the 18th century until the publication of Malthusian Essay in 1798. Utopia, whose generic construction relies on a social reflection, approaches often the problem theoretically, when it gives voice to populationists and their opponents. The article brings some light on the functioning of the literary and ideological utopia, and on use of this burning subject in philosophical debates.