Entre théâtre et poésie : devenir intermédial du poème et dispositif théâtral au tournant des XXe et XXIe siècles
In an effort to do away with an essentialist, rigid, and generic approach to poetry in dramatic works, this research looks at the relationship between poetry and drama using an intermedial methodology. By studying a sample corpus made up of textual and theatrical works, this thesis shows how the active presence of poetry is at work in theatre, thereby redefining each of the two concepts through the ways in which they interact. The first chapter traces the genealogy of intermediality within poetry and drama, and that of the dynamic connections between drama and poetry. Throughout the twentieth century, poetry and theatre have come to be seen as « hypermedia » (Kattenbelt), each of them bringing into play various types of media. Meanwhile a number of playwrights started developing dramatic poems exploring  intermedial processes. This research identifies and analyses four distinct forms in the thought and works of Mallarmé and Maeterlinck, Stein and Artaud, Gauvreau and Novarina, through the transmedial poetry developed by Cocteau at the confines of drama and cinematography. With a focus on works from the turn of the twentieth to twenty-first century, the second chapter offers a theoretical approach to the dramatic poem, that seeks to bring an updated approach to interactions between drama and poetry. The dramatic poem is an intermedial apparatus that, in Ortel and Rykner's view, inextricably combines the technical, the pragmatic and the symbolic. This apparatus is characterised by its dynamic radicalism, its performativity, its focus on the value of writing as a process and the way in which it conceives of impossibility as a dramatic driving force. Analyses of textual and dramatic works by Kane, Malone, Danis, Régy and Lemoine suggest how intermedial apparatuses are triggered and the kind of aesthetic experience the dramatic poem offers to readers and viewers. Contemplating intermedial processes of poetry in theatre allows for the reframing of an interartial model in an inclusive, hospitable fashion, where all art forms are considered equal, engage in dialogue and exchange, and combine their differences towards a common object.
Drama Theatre Poetry Poem Intermediality Apparatus Interartiality Contemporary