Rome : réalités, images, mythes (de Paul Bourget à Michel Butor)
Institution:
Paris 12Disciplines:
Directors:
Abstract EN:
Inthe contemporary french novel, rome is the archetypical city of paradox. The authors' treatments of it point out its antagonisms, its uncertainties, its contradictions. In fact, an evocation of time, for them, is a review of centuries past, but also of the present epoch, unification, fascism, because rome reveals itself as a veritable palimp sest on which one can read the city's multifold histories: the past blends constantly, and identifies itself, with the present. City that they ancher in space seems to exist as multiplicity. The portrait of a three-faced city emerges from their works. It's a profile of three more or less well defined universes: antiquity catholicism, modern times. Their analysis prompts one to retain the epithet baroque as one of the city's prime descriptions. For these authors, rome is the city of the baroque age, but especially the city where present and past, the profane and the sacred, beauty and ugliness shadow and light, the capital and the provincial all exist side by side their interpretation of myths suggests two constants: the she-wolf, the association roma amor. Myths that embody decadence replace the representation born of triumphalist legends. In the sense, by the same token, the anagramme becomes phonetic: unfulfille
Abstract FR:
Dan le roman contemporain d'expression francaise, rome est, par excellence, une ville antinomique. Son apprehension par les ecrivains, met en evidence ses antagonismes, ses ambivalences, ses contradictions. De fait, evoquer le temps, pour eux, c'est retracer les siecles precedents mais encore l'epoque contemporaine, l'unification, le fascisme, et ce, parce que rome se presente comme un veritable palimpseste sur lequel se lit la multitude de ses histoires: le passe se mele constamment au present pour s'identifier a lui. La cite qu'ils ancrent dans l'espace semble n'exister que comme multiplicite. Se profile a travers leurs oeuvres la representation d'une ville au triple visage. Il s'agit de trois univers plus ou moins delimites: l'antique, le catholique, le moderne leur analyse incite a retenir comme une des specificites du lieu l'epithete baroque. Pour ces auteurs, rome est la ville de l'age baroque mais surtout la ville ou le present et le passe, le profane et le sacre, le beau et le laid, l'ombre et la lumiere, la capitale et la province se cotoient. Leur interpretation des mythes suggere deux constantes: la louve, l'association roma-amer. Aux representations issues de la legende triomphaliste se substituent celles qui incarnent le concept de decadence. Dans ce sens, de meme, l'anagramme devient phonetique: non aboutissement, la mort de l'amour.