Etudes Anglaises - No4/2013

Jeremy ELPRIN "[T]he Life which was, as it were, already written": biographizing epistolary Keats If John Keats suspected he would be "among the English Poets" after his death, could he have imagined the multitude of biographical afterlives which would emerge from, and remain enveloped in, his private correspondence? In examining the relationship between Keats the letter-writer and Keats the biographical subject, this paper reflects on the possibility that this notoriously "posthumous"...
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Jeremy ELPRIN "[T]he Life which was, as it were, already written": biographizing epistolary Keats If John Keats suspected he would be "among the English Poets" after his death, could he have imagined the multitude of biographical afterlives which would emerge from, and remain enveloped in, his private correspondence? In examining the relationship between Keats the letter-writer and Keats the biographical subject, this paper reflects on the possibility that this notoriously "posthumous" Romantic poet might have anticipated the assimilation of his letters into a future biography, and investigates the ways in which he continues to have a warm and capable hand in the writing of his life. Si John Keats s''imaginait parmi les poetes anglais apres sa mort, aurait-il pu envisager le nombre de biographies auxquelles sa correspondance privee donnerait vie ? Cet article s''interroge sur le rapport entre Keats l''epistolaire et Keats le sujet biographique : tout d''abord, dans quelle mesure le poete aurait-il pu considerer qu''une eventuelle biographie soit fondee sur son corpus epistolaire ? On verra egalement comment, avec l''appropriation de ses lettres par ses biographes, ce poete notoirement posthume a toujours joue un role majeur, bien que destabilisant, dans l''ecriture de sa propre vie. Laurent FOLLIOT "Points have we all of us where all stand single": Wordsworth''s impersonal autobiography Wordsworth''s urge towards the egotistical sublime, as well as his occasional oversights, mean that The Prelude can be seen as a blueprint for the imaginative, transcendental narratives of the self that would culminate with Proust''s theory of the author''s "deeper I." This paper aims at locating Wordsworth''s singular achievement by contrasting it with other, contemporary modes of literary self-presentation, based in particular on the notion of character. Wordsworth''s peculiar blend of assertiveness and reserve stems as much from his desire to transfigure the vagaries of personal experience into the exemplary ''growth of the poet''s mind'' as from an insight into the nameless or homeless character of the imagination. La propension de Wordsworth au sublime egotiste, ainsi que sa tendance notoire aux omissions, font du Prelude le modele des recits de soi imaginatifs ou transcendentaux qui trouvent leur point culminant dans la theorie proustienne du moi profond. On s''efforcera ici de cerner la singularite de l''entreprise wordsworthienne en la comparant a d''autres modalites contemporaines de la presentation litteraire de soi, axees notamment sur la notion de caractere. Le melange d''assurance et de reserve qui distingue Wordsworth procede non seulement de son aspiration a l''exemplarite prophetique, mais aussi d''une imagination poetique hantee par la negation du nom et du lieu propres. Stephanie NOIRARD Iain Crichton Smith''s A Life: the poeisis of a self in "differance" After giving an overview of the main theories on autobiography and focusing on the debates around the issue of the biographical in poetry, this article offers both a chronological and synchronic reading of A Life, by Scottish poet Iain Crichton Smith (1928-1998). It first aims to analyse to what extent the collection may be looked upon as an autobiography before differentiating the life of the man from that of the poet and studying the actual part each plays in the work in order to then consider the collection as the history of a poetic writing. To do so, it relies on Derrida''s theories of differance (difference/deference) and limit, showing that autobiography has a kaleidoscopic nature, made all the easier by the poetic act. Apres un rappel theorique visant a mettre en valeur les principales etudes liees a l''autobiographie et aux debats sur l''autobiographique en poesie, cet article se consacre a une lecture chronologique et synchronique de A Life du poete ecossais Iain Crichton Smith (1928-1998). Dans un premier temps, il prend la mesure du biographique pour differencier ensuite la vie de l''homme de celle du poete et en apprecier la part prise au sein des poemes avant de considerer le recueil comme l''histoire d''une ecriture poetique. Il s''appuie sur les theories derridiennes de differance et de limite pour conclure a un biographique en caleidoscope facilite par le geste poetique. Neil ROBERTS What is literary biography for? Reflections of a biographer and critic This essay reflects on the function of literary biography by comparing the author''s own critical study of the poet Peter Redgrove, written without biographical research, with his later biography of the poet. It addresses the conundrum, that biographical knowledge cannot be necessary to the understanding of poetry, and may even compromise it, yet is unavoidable. It proposes two justifications for biography: first, to challenge the often self-serving metatext that the poet himself constructs; and second, to promote an understanding of what it takes, and costs, to create literary works. Cet article s''interroge sur la fonction de la biographie litteraire en comparant une etude critique de Peter Redgrove (Roberts 1994), ecrite en l''absence de toute recherche biographique, et une biographie du poete (Roberts 2012). Le paradoxe est que la connaissance biographique n''est pas necessaire a la comprehension de la poesie, et peut-etre meme qu''elle la compromet, alors qu''elle est pourtant indispensable. Cet essai propose deux justifications de la biographie : d''une part elle secoue le joug du metatexte souvent auto-apologetique construit par le poete lui-meme, de l''autre elle aide a comprendre les conditions, difficiles, necessaires a la creation des oeuvres litteraires. Carle BONAFOUS-MURAT Autobiography or case study? Rethinking Ciaran Carson''s poetry in the light of hypermnesia Recent criticism of Ciaran Carson''s work tends to emphasize the cultural, geopolitical and historical determinants of his "poetry of place." Models such as the aisling (or vision poem) or the dinnseanchas (the lore of place) have thus been adduced as evidence of its anchorage in a specifically Irish or Northern Irish tradition. Focusing on the issue of autobiography in three successive collections -- Belfast Confetti (1989), The Star Factory (1997) and The Pen Friend (2009) -- this essay purports instead to situate Carson''s poetry in a broader context, by showing how it continually negotiates between two prototypical representations of the self-the rural, nondescript space of Wordsworth''s Prelude and the urban-specific space of post-World-War-II English poetry. Its aim is to demonstrate that Carson''s works, like so many medical case studies about hypermnesia, grow almost organically out of a limited network of Belfast networks of streets and districts, which recur obsessively from one collection to the next so as to create a continuity akin to a poetics of the self. Les recherches les plus recentes concernant l''oeuvre de Ciaran Carson visent a mettre en lumiere les determinations culturelles, geopolitiques et historiques de sa " poetique des lieux ". Des modeles tels que l''aisling ou le dinnseanchas ont ainsi ete proposes pour justifier son ancrage dans une tradition specifiquement irlandaise ou nord-irlandaise. S''appuyant sur trois recueils successifs - Belfast Confetti (1989), The Star Factory (1997) et The Pen Friend (2009) - cet article entend au contraire situer la question de l''autobiographie dans un contexte plus large. La poesie de Carson navigue en effet constamment dans un entre-deux spatial qui plonge aussi bien ses racines dans le modele wordsworthien du Prelude, ou l''espace rural ne presente guere de traits distinctifs, que dans la poesie anglaise urbaine posterieure a 1945, qui inscrit les figurations du moi dans des lieux aux coordonnees precises. L''objectif est de demontrer que les recueils de Carson, comme autant d''etudes de cas medicaux sur l''hypermnesie, procedent d''un reseau limite de rues et de quartiers que les textes ressassent de maniere obsessionnelle, jusqu''a creer une impression de continuite qui s''apparente a une poesie de type autobiographique. Cyril VETTORATO Transubstantiating the intimate: the role of autobiographical elements in the poetry of Kamau Brathwaite Critics have duly noted the progressive gain of significance of autobiographical elements in the works of Kamau Brathwaite, from his first trilogy published in the late 1960s to his more recent works. But the interpretation of this dynamics has been rendered uneasy by the preponderance of historical and political readings of his poetry, which is indeed deeply connected to his work as a cultural historian of the postcolonial Caribbean. The autobiographical elements in his poems, however, are much more than the dispensable relics of a self-absorbed lyricism. The autobiographical is conceived less as a poetic material for its own sake than as an alchemical material aimed at opening new collective horizons for the Caribbean. La critique a note a juste titre la prise d''importance progressive du registre autobiographique dans l''oeuvre de Kamau Brathwaite, entre sa premiere trilogie publiee a la fin des annees 1960 et ses textes plus recents. Mais l''interpretation de cette dynamique a ete rendue delicate par la preponderance des lectures historiques et politiques de sa poesie, laquelle ne manque pas, de fait, de correspondances avec ses travaux d''historien de la culture de la Caraibe postcoloniale. Les elements autobiographiques presents ne peuvent pas pour autant etre reduits a de simples residus d''un lyrisme autocentre. Le registre autobiographique est moins une fin en soi qu''un materiau alchimique destine a ouvrir de nouveaux horizons collectifs pour la Caraibe. Marc POREE Poets'' lives in motion (pictures) Three propositions underpin this paper. Proposition number 1: that a writer''s life of any worth, a poet''s life most particularly, is a "continual allegory" (Keats, Levinson): the pressure towards a Gestalt, a