Abstract EN:

Though it is about to celebrate its jubilee, nous deux magazine is widely criticized as the archetype of the "heart press". How can one think this object which is part of common pleasures ? First by considering that it may belong to a sensible cultural idiom, whose elements must be accounted for. The first step will be a genuine diachronic survey which aims at determining the magazine's ever recomposed identity on account of the evolutions of the strategies used by its editors. This historical survey allows us to shed light on modulations, on contradictions, and more generally on dialectics which require an analytic pattern of complexity, and making us wonder about the notion of quality, and therefore about the social definition of tastes. Still, sentimental stories stand at the ground of the identity of nous deux : the question of its meaning goes through a thorough analysis of the principles of sentimental stories, of their components, modalities and evolutions ; this lets us wonder if those stories are specific and modern, and to what extent. But this survey makes sense only if the researcher makes his position clear, as well as the position of the common readers, their power of "aesthetic constituting" and the modalities of their pleasure. But the meaning of nous deux lies first in its insertion in the society where it is issued and received. It may be seen as a reflection of mass portraits. But this answer is not satisfactory. It is also necessary to size up, more particulary, the impacts of this magazine, the "ecology" of its reading and the critics which condemn the magazine in the very name of the values it defends. Therefore, the study of an alien branch of the female press enables us to focus more precisely on popular entertainment, on the competition between cultural and social logics within the same society, and, all things considered, on the foundations of a democracy.