Generic didacticism: 20th century poetry's search for itself (Stephane Mallarme, Francis Ponge, Michel Deguy, Philippe Jaccottet).

摘要

20th century French poetry is often preoccupied with its own status as such: as poetry. The poetic act thus becomes an attempt to occupy the position of both “species” and “genre,” defining the limits of what is poetically viable while simultaneously offering itself as an example of poetic viability. This dissertation focuses on four poets—Stéphane Mallarmé, Francis Ponge, Michel Deguy and Philippe Jaccottet—for whom the fusion of poetry and poetics is a dominant concern.; Although Mallarmé's influence on the history of 20th century poetics is widely recognized, the nature of his contribution has been somewhat over-institutionalized. His influence is here reevaluated in terms of his work's inherently didactic tenor, almost invariably trying to communicate the nature and limits of poetic language itself. Through a rehabilitation of the poetically anathematized “enseigner” of “Crises de vers,” the introductory chapter elucidates upon how literary history seems to have read Mallarmé against himself, leaving us with a heritage in which one of poetry's primary functions is none other than to speak its own nature. With a brief look at Surrealism, the first chapter takes the reader through the generalization of poetry's self-legitimizing function and, in a later section, places Mallarmé at the origin of such strategies.; The second chapter widens the examination of poetic didacticism by looking at the literary pedagogical investment of Francis Ponge, whose corpus is redefined as a project of linguistic self/other reeducation. His preoccupation with genre is studied as the logical counterpart to a larger preoccupation with the effectiveness of “poetic” language. The third chapter, on Michel Deguy, brings a poet-philosopher into the discussion and problematizes the status of poetry as a “discours du beau” merged with a “discours du vrai.” Here, issues of authenticity and philosophical “truth” are considered in relation to poetic language as an “ontological” phenomenon. And lastly, a reading of Philippe Jaccottet, whose “simplicity” is really just surface effect of a classical stance on language, softens our view on the subject of meta-poetry and genre, leaving philosophical concerns by the wayside and reviving issues of poetic spirituality and faith.