Strands of Utopia: Spaces of Poetic Work in Twentieth-Century France

ISBN-13: 9781905981144 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 280 str.

Michael G. Kelly

Opis

The poetic is an abiding yet elusive qualification within the discursive system of twentieth-century French literature. No longer amenable to formal assignment, its recurrences delimit a shifting, multi-layered practice of artistic and intellectual (self-) invention. This study attempts to outline certain durable properties of that practice by confronting it with the complex theoretical and spatial metaphor of utopia. Drawing, in particular, upon the oeuvres of Victor Segalen (1878-1919), Rene Daumal (1908-44) and Yves Bonnefoy (b. 1923), it traces poetic work - work done in support of poetic difference - along the social, physical and textual axes of what is argued to be a sustained and radically inclusive utopian practice within the literary field. The complex utopian quality of poetic work is linked to the cultural persistence of the poetic as a simple attribute within literary practice. In uncovering this link, the study encourages revised understandings of both the poetic and the utopian in the modern French literary context."

Spis treści

Introduction: Towards a Utopian Space of Poetic Work Part I: Lieu commun Poetic Foundation and the Limit of Community 1. The Common Object of Poetic Work 2. Pragmatics of the Common Object 3. Between Order and Origin: Victor Segalen 4. Silent Community and Revolutionary Speech: Rene Daumal 5. Poetic Foundation in the Opening of Language: Yves Bonnefoy Part II: Haut Lieu (Dis)placing the Scene of Poetic Experience 6. Experience and the Scene of Experience 7. Poetic Placements 8. Segalen outside the Forbidden City 9. Daumal on the Slopes of Mont Analogue 10. Bonnefoy in the Arriere-pays Part III: Non-lieu Formative and Transformational Attributes of Poetic Textuality 11. Emergence of the Poetic Text as Non-lieu 12. Ambivalence of a Spatial Logic in the Non-lieu 13. Segalen: Metamorphoses of the Non-lieu 14. Daumal: The Lieu of the Non and the Imaginary of a Poetic Affirmation 15. Bonnefoy: The Poetic Non-lieu and the Practice of Hope 16. Conclusion: Within Disenchantment

O autorze

Michael G Kelly