En hiver 1996, Michel Delon, Professeur de littérature à Paris X-Nanterre, a donné un séminaire DEA/maîtrise intitulé "La Poétique du regard au 18e siècle." Delon y traîte l'optique du regard dans la diversité de ses dispositifs dans les textes de théorie et de fiction de l'époque. Il démontre le déploiement du regard dans les oeuvres de Diderot (le tableau esthétique), de Marivaux (le regard surpris ou la femme au miroir) et de Sade (le regard détourné), aussi bien que dans le roman libertin. A travers la dynamique du regard, le roman s'ouvre au lecteur qui participe activement dans la structuration de la narration. Le lecteur devient à la fois voyeur et acteur dans des scènes qui nécessite toujours la présence d'un témoin. Sensibilité artistique et désir amoureux se traduisent également par des regards différents qui définissent des relations complexes entre objet du désir, sujet désirant et voyeur dérobé.

The young narrator in Du côté de chez Swann follows the course of the Vivonne with its nymphéas and crystal waters in his idealistic pursuit of the myth of the Guermantes only to discover many years later a "Vivonne mince et laide au bord du chemin de halage," whose source is not the romantic fount he had imagined but "une espèce de lavoir carré où montaient des bulles" (4:267-68). Readers of A la recherche du temps perdu, Marcel Proust's roman-fleuve, encounter the same problems of perception, identity and time as we navigate a current that holds countless surprises for even its most seasoned travelers and that teems with enough flora and fauna to satisfy the most exacting naturalist. While the stream remains difficult to chart, certain creative mapping attempts such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's "Proust and the Spectacle of the Closet," from her larger work, Epistemology of the Closet, not only explore essential problematics within the novel, but reveal fundamental problems at the root (to switch metaphors briefly) of Proust criticism.

The seventeenth-century French salon of the Marquise de Rambouillet played a decisive role in the development of social conduct. Within the Marquise's chambre bleue, members set new parterns for behavioral codes by refining the nuances of politeness, gallantry and above all, conversation. Two distinct modes of comportment, honnêteté and préciosité, evolved from the atmosphere of the blue room. However, their paths branched out in diverging directions. The honnête homme became the social ideal whereas the précieuse became an object of satire and ridicule. Male writers of the century, including Molière and the Abbé de Pure, mocked the précieuse's imaginative language which clashed with the honnête homme's sober manner. Without any texts from the hand of a woman claiming to be a précieuse or to defend her cause, préciosité's legacy fell into the hands of its detractors.

The outpouring of satirical literature about the précieuse represented a response to a perceived threat. writers did not trivialize the précieuse's character solely on the basis of her sex, but rather on the fear of her challenge to the established political and social order. This article seeks to demonstrate the subversiveness of préciosité to a monarch who attempted to build glory on fabricated and artificial acts of distinction. The précieuse challenged Louis XIV, the "ultimate sign maker" (Stanton Aristocrat 129), by undermining his power base. Her discourse constructed new meanings between words and things, signs and referents.

Two of the most famous plays about Haiti's 1791 independence and the years following are Monsieur Toussaint by Edouard Glissant and The Tragedy of King Christophe by Aimé Césaire. [...]

In exploring how the trope of power functions in these two plays, I will examine, within both textual and historical contexts, how these early Haitian leaders responded to their populace in terms of class, color and gender. I will also investigate how the people reacted to them. This interaction is dramatically portrayed by various sets of characters. Aside from the peasants, soldiers and workers depicted in the texts, there are selected individuals who form what we might liken to Greek choruses. In both plays, these choruses act alternatively in an obsequious and admonitory manner toward their two leaders. These groups serve as a barometer of the psychological changes which Toussaint and Christophe undergo as they rise in society. The rise illustrates Albert Memmi's observation in the epigraph that the primary danger of such a trajectory involves the risk of imitating the colonizer to the extent that the revolutionary leader becomes someone who is no longer akin to the people he initially led. The interrogation of postcolonial power occurs at precisely such an intersection of the leader/follower relationship in these works.

Sensualist, satanist, troubador of the life of the streets and the brothels, urban savage, salon wit, absolutist aesthete: Charles Baudelaire holds a special place in French popular culture. Films and plays depict a suave, womanizing rake: in the film Les Fleurs du Mal, "Baudelaire" flings noblewomen to the ground to have his way with them; in a one-man show, "Baudelaire" sips champagne, laughs with his head thrown back and caresses women in the audience. Condemned for obscenity in France, he has come over time to embody France, or a certain reading of France, the France of libertine life and art. Yet his letters to his mother reveal another Baudelaire. Among the letters, those written during the final stages of his illness are most provocative.

Notre propos est d'observer une butée. Pour ce faire, nous commencerons par prendre la mesure d'un but. De l'oeuvre de Fourier, nous tenterons de dégager la visée: non pas tant pour analyser l'organisation du monde qu'il espérait instaurer que pour cerner le type d'effet qu'il charchait à obtenir par la rédaction et la publication de se écrits. Charles Fourier fut l'auteur au début du 19e siècle d'une oeuvre généralement qualifié d'utopique où se mèle à la critique de la société des propositions inédites de réformes agraires, économiques, politiques et sociales. Notre objet sera donc d'abord un projet: par-delà l'oeuvre réalisée, nous essaierons de reconstituer l'oeuvre rêvée et l'impacte qu'elle aurait dû avoir sur le destin du monde. Ce sera l'occasion d'explorer un avatar précoce de ce fantasme du Livre Absolu qui hantera toute la fin du siècle - châtré cependant du contenu social et historique qui l'anime encore chez notre auteur.