Abstract EN:

The expression "prose poem" does not appear in the nineteenth century : throughout the eighteenth century, it is used to distinguish a prose which can pretend to a poetical status, in the same way as verse (that from then on neither systemat ically nor exclusively determines the existence of poetry). But, during the first decades of the nineteenth century, after the more definitive recognition of this prose poetry, the prose can be elaborated more specifically as a poem (in the modern use of the term, and no longer in the classical and analogical sense of "work in poetic style" or "prose epic"). It creates then a new type of poeticity, abandoning the predefined norms and thus benefiting from non predetermined poetic effects which make any systematic and modelising definition of the genre impossible. This kind of original poetic owes its actualization uniquely to the recognition activity of its reader. The prose poem is consequently dependent on its receipt - problematical at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the authors of these first prose poems (ludovic de cailleux, alphonse rabbe, aloysius bertrand, xavier forneret, maurice de guerin and jules lefevre-deumier) not only make this new poetics instrument the object but also the means of a new order poetical quest. The prose poem thus acquires an exploratory and experimental value. Initiator of new types of poeticity, it also elaborates some processes of poetical reflection (by itself and upon itsel), which will determine the subsequent evolutions of poetry. Open and uncertain, the genre therefore also appears as eminently virtual and paradoxical : its generic identity being built upon its capacity to inaugurate new modes of poeticity and genericity, it is doomed to see this generic specificity dissolve at the very moment that it accedes to an entire recognition