Abstract

Poetic figuration has usually been defined using stylistic and rhetorical approaches. To extend and complement these traditional methods, my dissertation offers an epistemological definition of poetic figuration , which takes into account the poetic process of knowing the world and expressing that knowledge to others. Since the scope of my study is modern French poetry, I begin with a contextualization of the problematic of poetic figuration in nineteenth-century poetry. The crisis of figuration, enacted in works by Victor Hugo and Stephane Mallarme, is analyzed in Chapter 1 so as to set the stage for my subsequent analyses of the attempts to transcend that crisis made by two twentieth-century French poets, Andre Breton and Francis Ponge. The bio-historical relations between Breton and Ponge are the subject of Chapter 2, in which Ponge's "Le Cycle des saisons" is interpreted as an allegorical critique of the epistemological means of poetic figuration proposed by Breton. The first two chapters establish the necessary historical background for Chapter 3, in which theoretical definitions of the poetic figure and figuration are offered. Breton and Ponge's 1952 interview is analyzed in terms of analogy and composition as further evidence of their differing epistemological systems. Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate two keys to Breton's poetic epistemology: ana-logy, and automatisms. The former concerns the conjointment of poetic analogy and ana-logical reasoning in Breton's poetic universe, analyzed in "A Monsieur V," "Tournesol," "Vigilance," and "L'Union libre," while the second establishes a definition of automatism as a constraint through analyses of "A Monsieur V," "Andre Derain," "Reve," "Tournesol," and "L'Union libre." Ponge's metalogical conception of poetic analogy is defined and illustrated in Chapter 6 with analyses of texts such as "La Cigarette," "L'Hui tre," and "Ode inachevee a la boue." His aesthetics of perpetual imperfectibility is the subject of Chapter 7, in which texts such as "La Crevette dans tous ses etats" and "Notes prises pour un oiseau" are analyzed. The poetic means he creates to enact his epistemological-aesthetic position are depicted in relation to Breton's automatic method for acquiring knowledge and creating a new aesthetics