La poétique de Chateaubriand : le portrait dans les "Mémoires d'outre-tombe"
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Abstract EN:
Ce travail veut redonner aux portraits leur juste place dans l'appreciatioin de l'oeuvre et de la poetique de chateaubriand, ainsi que dans la reflexion theorique sur l'art de la description. Il procede a l'elaboration d'une definition du portrait a partir de ses caracteristiques formelles et examine ensuite sa genese dans l'oeuvre de chateaubriand, ses techniques descriptives, ses sujets et ses composantes. L'etude de la description physique aborde la question de l'unite des arts, essentielle a la theorie du portrait litteraire ; elle revele les talents de caricaturiste de chateaubriand, son gout pour le grotesque, mais aussi son choix d'une esthetique de la grace dans les portraits feminins. Celle de la description morale decouvre sa pensee politique et litteraire, son habilete dans le panegyrique et surtout dans la satire et dans la polemique. Le but de ses portraits reste neanmoins de ressaisir, a travers les structures du mythe et de l'epopee, la puissance symbolique des personnages, et particulierement de napoleon, dont le portrait devient l'incarnation exemplaire du heros romantique et illustre au mieux les principes historiographiques de chateaubriand.
Abstract FR:
This work intends to give again to the portraits their proper place in the judgment of chateaubriand's work and poetics, as well as in the theoretical reflection on the art of description. Il deals with the elaboration of a definition of the portrait based on its formal characteristics ; it then considers its evolution in chateaubriand's work, its descriptives techniques, its subjects and its components. The study of the physical description touches on the question of the unity of arts, which is essential to the theory of literary portrait ; it reveals chateaubriand's gifts for caricature, his taste for the grotesque, as well as his choice of an aesthetics of the grace in his portraits of women. The study of the moral description reveals his political and literary thought, his cleverness at writing panegytics, and most of all, satires and polemics. Yet, the aim of his portraits remains to seize, through the structures of the myth and of the epic, the symbolic power of the characters, and espacially of napoleon, whose portrait becomes the best embodiment of the romantic hero, and shows at best chateaubriand's historiographic principles.