La littérature aux limites du lisible : singularités de l’expérience littéraire dans le champ poétique français contemporain
This dissertation focuses on the readability of literature—on the readability of a certain literature: French, contemporary, a literature that is more often than not classified in the poetic field. At first, a simple observation: some books are difficult to read. Sometimes we even get so far as to say they are unreadable; if this judgment cannot provide a rigorous concept to describe the texts, it nevertheless raises a number of questions which are at the heart of this dissertation. For there is nothing unreadable in itself: the unreadable is not a property, but a judgment that translates an impasse in reading. Thus, the verdicts of unreadability have varied causes and consequences. The unreadable is situated: it is difficult to approach it outside of its circumstances, since it refers less to a specific content than to an experience.  The objective here is not to alleviate the misunderstanding that can be felt in front of certain texts, but rather to question the place it occupies in our ways of reading and our relation to literature. This dissertation proposes to reflect on these questions by approaching the works of Jean-Michel Reynard, Christophe Tarkos, Denis Roche, Anne-Marie Albiach, Christian Prigent, Valère Novarina and Pierre Guyotat. These works do not all have the same place in this dissertation. In this sense, the aim is not to exhaust them but to raise a number of questions through them. Different questions according to the works, according to the writers, but which are crossed by a common thread: the literary experience.  From singular situations, the goal is thus to understand certain aspects, certain modalities of the literary experience. The two poles of this experience are writing and reading—related to those are the figures of the writer and the reader, which occupy an important place in this dissertation. Therefore, the perspective is broad, which raises questions sometimes of poietic, centred on the way writers live the creation of their works, and sometimes more of poetic, even politic, which rather refer to the ways in which readers, on their side, experience these radically singular texts.  In short, the objectives of this dissertation are: 1) to study these works from a new angle; 2) through their problematic example, to lay the foundations for a reflection on readability that gives a large place to the writers’ posture and the way they live the creation of their works; and 3) to contribute to studies on creation, reception and mediation of literary works by reflecting on our ways of living (with) literature.
sens Jean-Michel Reynard Christophe Tarkos Denis Roche Anne-Marie Albiach Christian Prigent Valère Novarina Pierre Guyotat Literary experience Readability Meaning Singularity and community Poietic Poetic