thesis

Madame du deffand epistoliere ou l'impossible communication

Defense date:

Jan. 1, 1986

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Institution:

Paris 4

Disciplines:

Literature

Authors:

Directors:

Abstract EN:

For madame du deffand, letter-writing is the thorough means of an endless selfinvestigation (or quest), of an exerlasting wondering about one's existence which reminds of a personal diary, of "essays" such as montaigne wrote them. She felt alien to her background, her world, her age and even to her own self all through her life ; she was disgusted with everything (first and foremost with her own self) she tried to turn her pen friends into the auxiliaries of this quest for living through disappointing attempts at identification (such as highly idealistic parents'images, voltaire's and madame de choiseul's out of reach gifts), at adoption (as a matter of fact, attempts at shaping up beings that reflect her expectation, with julie de lespinasse's and d'alembert's filial relation-ships), at last at self-surrender in a thwarted relationship (which meant to be a loving one) with the other one perfectly embodied in walpole. As a matter of fact, blocked up by an ineradicable narcissism, a definitely pathological, chronical melancholy mania, she couldn't adjust herself to the outside world that set in action against the free expansion of her ego, its standing value or its lack of meaning. This kind of spiritual biography can be read as a deep, emotional frustration which leads to a "value" crisis (or upheaval), to a thorough change of the sensitivity, to a giddy feeling when living has to be faced, the risk of which must be run, alone, in a world doesn't provide any support because it keeps vanishing and because self growth can only be achieved from an empty span of time.

Abstract FR:

Pour madame du deffand, la correspondance est le lieu et l'instrument d'une interminable quete de soi, d'un continuel questionnement de son existence qui fait penser a un journal intime, a des "essais" a la facon de montaigne. S'eprouvant tout au long de sa vie comme etrangere a ses origines, a son monde, a son siecle et a elle-meme, degoutee de tout (et d'abord d'elle-meme), elle cherche a faire de ses correspondants les auxiliaires de cette aventure d'etre par des tentatives decevantes d'identification (avec les figures parentales fortement idealisees et donc inaccessibles de voltaire et de madame de choiseul), d'"adoption" (en realite tentatives pour modeler des etres qui repondent a son attente avec les figures filiales de julie de lespinasse et de d'alembert), et enfin d'abandon de soi dans une relation crispee (qui voudrait etre une relation amoureuse) avec l'autre represente de facon exemplaire par walpole. En realite, muree dans un narcissisme inexpugnable de caractere nettement pathologique (melancolie chronique), elle ne peut s'accommoder de l'exteriorite qui oppose a la libre expansion du moi son opacite (sa resistance) ou son insipidite (son insignifiance : henault) on peut lire dans cette espece de biographie spirituelle une frustration affective profonde qui conduit a une crise des valeurs, a une metamorphose de la sensibilite, au vertige devant une existence dont il faut assumer solitairement le risque au sein d'un monde qui se derobe dans une absence radicale et d'une duree vide offerte a l'invention du moi.