Abstract

Chapter one takes as its point of departure the observation that Ponge's work concerns "things," then establishes, by means of close textual analysis embracing the quasi-totality of the author's writings, the intimate relations between these "things" and the rerum primordia, that is, the atoms of ancient atomism. Comparison with the work of Epicurus and Lucretius demonstrates that Ponge's poetic cosmogony is situated within the atomistic philosophical tradition. A major point of poetic contact involves the Lucretian discussion of linguistic phenomena as being analogous to the phenomena of the exterior world, in that both are the product of the permutations of the elements . ;Chapter two demonstrates the simultaneous presence, within the work of Ponge, of both pre-scientific and scientific strains of atomism. The critical commonplace according to which Ponge's work is predominantly concerned with the discrete properties of things is modified; and light is shed upon the author's statements about the "scientific" nature of his work. The analogy made in Ponge's day between the functioning of the solar system and that of the atom is shown to be of great relevance, especially as regards Ponge's proffering of the pre-classical poet Malherbe as the metaphorical nucleus of modern French letters. ;Chapter three explores in greater detail the essential role of analogy as such in Ponge's work. Its analysis focuses on the revivification of the "banal" analogy of literary composition as weaving. It demonstrates the "hygienic" aspect of the refreshment of the commonplace, a poetics that recreates the prosaic's poetic potential, thus installing it as poetry's future foundation. The association between Ponge's work and Epicureanism is shown to reside in the analogy "text-world," stemming from the poetry of Lucretius, according to whom all phenomena are the text of the interweaving of the atomic elements. Therefore the study of the Word is not and cannot be an essentially different enterprise from the study of the World. This notion is the metarhetorical foundation stone of the Pongian edifice and of this study of Ponge's Word