Abstract EN:

The issue of the German reception of Jean Cocteau opens a large space where he plays with identities which he systematically instrumentalizes for his “self-fashioning” (Greenblatt). In this perspective the thesis first procedes to the historical and analytical description of the criticism of Cocteau’s “poésie de théâtre” in Germany. Based on a large dossier of over 2. 000 press articles, the thesis gives a synopsis of several hundred theatratical productions in German language until the year 2000, and discusses, in its hermeneutical approach, the reasons for the changing reception. After an analysis of Cocteau’s writings about his own reception, the thesis then shows that the poet instrumentalizes and fashions this reception for occasional or permanent aims. On the systematical background of Cocteau’s poetics, the thesis reads the poet’s recurrent self-fashioning as the “persecuted poet” as a rhetorical strategy which constantly claims artistic originality and personal authenticity.