• Keywords

aphorism, contemporary poetry

• Profile and skills required

M1 about Cioran (fragment)

M2 about Char (aphorism)

• Project description

The twentieth century constitutes a veritable golden age for aphorisms in France: their proliferation is concomitant with their constitution as a genre, a conflicting constitution at a time of crisis of values. This revival of the aphorism is part of a literary history: modern poetry, profoundly marked by the Whitmanian tradition of the tension towards silence, struggles to ensure its word. The aphorism is then the place of all the tug-of-war: between classicism and modernity, between austerity of condensation and lyrical impulse, hermeticism and pedagogy, absolutization and relativization, gaiety and melancholy. A large body of critical literature has been developing on this subject since the 1980s, reflecting on these oppositions by proposing various definitions of the fragment and the aphorism, as well as statements of the situation that are as much historical milestones. We can mention Nemer, 1982; Montandon, 1992; Susini-Anastopoulos, 1997, as well as the two founding works, Marie-Paule Berranger's thesis on the surrealist aphorism, Dépaysement de l'aphorisme (1988) and Philippe Moret's work on the immediately post-surrealist aphorism, Tradition et modernité de l'aphorisme (1997).

• References

Marie-Paule Berranger, Dépaysement de l'aphorisme (1988)

Philippe Moret, Tradition et modernité de l'aphorisme (1997)

To apply, click here