Authors:Pedro Pardo Jiménez Abstract: The goal of this article is to show that the most original aspect of Gérard Genette’s autobiographical writing is the regular – not to say systematic – resort to quotation, which in the case of the French author is associated to three main functions that are an accurate reflection of his personality and vision of the world. Thus, argumentative quotation mainly appears in Genette’s reflection about literature and art, though his use of it is not conventional. Also, memories generate quotations of testimonial value in which both the past and his loved ones are described through expressions that were their own, a task in which the author exhibits an acute sensitivity towards his contemporaries’ linguistic uses. Finally, quotation often takes on a purely ludic character, not only because it narrates more or less funny anecdotes, but because of the way in which Genette exploits the countless variants arising from the very act of reproducing others’ discourses. Deep down, the recurring pr... PubDate: 2022-04-29
Authors:Luciano Pellegrini Abstract: The paper compares two texts: Hugo’s Hernani and Piave’s libretto Ernani, based on the former for Verdi’s music. The aim is to investigate what survives of the revolutionary aspects of the original text in the Italian language used in the libretto. Referring to his works and to Hernani as well, Hugo had claimed he had «set the language free» pushing the literary French towards the colloquial one. In spite of that, the libretto draws on the literary archaisms which characterized the coeval poetry ignoring Hugo’s innovations and testifying to the “delay” of the Italian language. In the first part, the paper compares Hugo’s direct expression and prosaic tension to the pretentious periphrasis and syntactic inversions of the Piave’s libretto. Attention is then paid to the level of the signifier, namely to the ludic use of rhymes and phonic iterations. The close reading of the libretto reveals its internal logic and poetic dignity. More than that, comparing Hugo’s virtuoso multi-layered s... PubDate: 2022-04-29
Authors:Ignacio Ramos-Gay Abstract: The aim of this article is to analyse the presence of “animaux savants” in the Parisian théâtre de la foire of the second half of the eighteenth century and their interaction with the female audience. Through the examination of chronicles, reviews and other literary output of the time that depicted or referred to the figure of Turco, the celebrated monkey that was displayed by Jean-Baptiste Nicolet in the Théâtre des Grands Danseurs de Corde during the 1760s, I address the type of contact established between the animal and the women who delighted in his antics. Such interactions, I argue, are revealing of man’s voyeuristic gaze upon female animality, at the same time that they hint at a zoophilic tension that is consistent with the type of observations and arguments collected in travel narratives and scientific writings of the time. I conclude that such spectacle foreshadowed the image of the abject femininity that would, only a century later, become so integral to the circus exhibi... PubDate: 2022-04-29
Authors:François Rouget Abstract: xvith century poetic albums are the evidence of the female contribution to the cultural activities related to the «salons», coteries and aristocratic gatherings. In the perspective of literary studies that have been conducted for the past century, this article studies the circle of Catherine de Retz with the analysis of the manuscript Français 862 at the National Library of France. In this volume, many poems by Jean Passerat, Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Philippe Desportes, the Dames Des Roches, the cardinal Du Perron, without counting Amadis Jamyn whose sonnets deal with several muses, have been copied. In this article, love poetry by Jamyn and Jean de Cholières is analysed in relation to the Court (i.e. the secret love affair between king Charles IX and Anne d’Atri d’Aquaviva, also celebrated by Ronsard) and to the Retz «salon». By the close reading of some poems by Jamyn, transcribed in the manuscript Français 862, and other poems (identified or anonymous) that are published in La Gue... PubDate: 2022-04-29
Authors:Serena Codena Abstract: This article aims to retrace the evolution of Yourcenar’s lost work, Dramatis Personae, a collection of mythological plays (Électre ou la chute des masques, Le Mystère d’Alceste, Qui n’a pas son Minotaure') written during the 1940s, a period wrongly considered unproductive for the author, in order to understand the importance of this text in the writer’s literary production. Thanks to some unpublished letters and the recent publication of Yourcenar’s correspondence with her editor Emmanuel Boudot-Lamotte, we can have more information about a collection that, even if it was never published, represents an important stage in the development of her theatrical work, especially as regards Qui n’a pas son Minotaure', which was reworked several times during those years. Moreover, the history of the collection’s preface is also remarkable, because Yourcenar readapted three of her previous mythological articles (Mythologies), published before the project of Dramatis Personae, to form a huge p... PubDate: 2022-04-29
Authors:Debora Rampone Abstract: Henry Bauchau’s interest and fascination for the Theban myth resulted in the publication of two novels: Œdipe sur la route in 1990 and Antigone in 1997. The latter constitutes a very important stage in his career because it is thanks to it that Bauchau is recognized as an internationally renowned writer. In order to deepen the study of the genesis of the novel, in this work we have taken into consideration some significant passages of the essay La lumière Antigone, published within the collection L’écriture à l’écoute, to try to better understand its very complex evolution, characterized by a constant process of reformulation and rewriting. It is also possible to observe that the character of Antigone assumes such a deep meaning that it goes beyond the boundaries of the novel and the myth, to become part of the author’s private life. Precisely for this reason, the evolution of the character of Antigone that Bauchau associates with the image of light and that becomes a symbol of his ... PubDate: 2022-04-29
Authors:Frank Lestringant Abstract: André Gide is the main personage of Julien Green’s Journal intégral, which has recently been published, for the first time in its unabridged edition. Gide is mentioned more than sixty times in this period beginning in the days following the First World War, in 1919, up to the French army’s rout in 1940. Gide, who is thirty years older than Green, becomes his fellow, soon his friend. However he is regarded more as a confidant than as a model, because of the great reticences relating to his works. Gide has soon not only sexual complicity with him, but, above all, he becomes Green’s close friend, so to speak, his elder brother. PubDate: 2022-04-29
Authors:Andrea Masnari Abstract: The Savant certainly represents one of the most popular figures in French literature at the end of the nineteenth century. A specialist of the various branches of knowledge, this emblematic figure seems to reflect the great passion for science that characterizes this particular historical era, in which progress and technological discoveries play an important role in everyday life. Savants of all kinds invade the literary fiction of these years, crossing the great multitude of literary genres that enriches the cultural panorama of the fin-de-siècle. Doctors, scientists, professors, inventors become the recurrent protagonists of literary productions, conquering the main literary scene, from Naturalism to Science fiction and from Symbolism the Decadent movement. In addition to these scientific figures, other types of Savants permeate fin-de-siècle fiction. Occultists, magicians and sorcerers indeed play an important role in the literary genres, thus embodying other forms of erudition: “... PubDate: 2022-04-29
Authors:Philippe S. Robichaud Abstract: In troubled post-revolutionary Paris, many médecins philosophes associated with the prehistory of psychiatry exhibit marked interest in the study of “curative” or “iatric” music, defending its value with a battery of scientific “proof”. One of the period’s best-selling novels, Sophie Cottin’s Malvina (1800), features a fictional physician, Dr. Potwel, that experiments with the effects of music on his patient, the eponymous protagonist. Malvina, who suffers from what we might today call severe depersonalization due to emotional trauma, is brought back to reality with music. The careful narration of Potwel’s curious therapeutic means not only bears witness to a shift away from purely somatic explanations of affective states, but also depicts a reflection on the irresolute position of medical professionals themselves when held accountable for the mental well-being of their patients. PubDate: 2022-04-29
Authors:Luca Ferraro Abstract: After the list and the analysis of the translations of The Trophy-Bucket in France between 17th and 19th century, this article deals with Pierre Perrault’s translation, published in 1678. Through the analysis of the long avertissement, with some excerpts of the text, it is shown the way the work is used as an instrument of the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns in support of Modernes and against Boileau’s Lutrin. PubDate: 2022-04-29
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