Leon bloy : journalisme et subversion 1874-1917

Leon bloy : journalism and subversion 1874-1917

• Auteur / Autrice : Michèle Fontana
• Direction : Roger Bellet
• Type : Thèse de doctorat
• Discipline(s) : Littérature française
• Date : Soutenance en 1995
• Etablissement(s) : Lyon 2

Résumé

Alors que la critique bloyenne se renouvelle, les articles de bloy forment encore un coprus delaisse ou reduit a une production violente et reactionnaire. Bloy ne cessant de se proclamer "crieur public" de dieu, pamphletaire, mais aussi artiste, cette etude postule l'unite de ce corpus epars, et se propose d'etablir que sa force subversive provient davantage d'une demarche litteraire que de positions partisanes. Une perspective diachronique semble d'abord necessaire pour rendre compte d'un retournement : bloy, engage dans la presse conservatrice, est amene a renoncer a la polemique et a se faire pamphletaire solitaire, liberant douleur et revolte. Une approche synchronique tente ensuite de degager les caracteristiques des textes. Dans une presse liberee par la loi de 1881, bloy radicalise sa critique de la societe et lui donne un inflechissement mythique. Il developpe une parole de type prophetique, veritable acte de parole, et privilegie l'hyperbole et l'image, reactivant avec intensite des metaphores tirees de la litterature religieuse, en une vision apocalyptique. Bloy denonce le reportage et la critique comme des mensonges, et propose, sous forme de revelation, sa propre interpretation des faits divers et de la litterature. Cela autorise bien des ereintements, mais donne aussi acces a des oeuvres fortes, dont celle de lautreamont. L'unite des textes reside dans une ecriture qui, pratiquant l'intertextualite, abolit toute frontiere entre les textes de bloy, et place en reference centrale le texte divin, dont le texte bloyen ne serait qu'enluminure.

While criticisms about bloy's works are resuming, his articles make a forsaken corpus which is most often reduced to a violent and reactionary production. As for him, bloy has never stopped proclaiming himself as "a town-crier" of god, a pamphleeter and an artist too. The unity of this corpus being postulated, this survey will establish that its subversive force comes much more from a literary process than from political positions. A diachronic view seems to be necessary in order to set up how bloy, committed in conservative newspapers, is forced to give up polemic and to become a lonely pampheleeter, giving free way to pain and revolt. Then, in a synchronic approach, it is possible to characterize articles. Bloy criticises the society in a radicalist way and he gives his remarks a muthical reorientation. In the press liberated by the law in 1881, he develops a prophetical way of speaking, real act of speaking, and he favours hyperbole and image, reusing with force metaphors from religious literature in an apocalyptic vision of the world. Bloy denouces reporting and criticism as lies and propounds his own view of the news item and literature, as a revelation which restores the truth. This determinedly subjective attitude justifies many attacks, but it gives him access to strong texts like these of lautreamont. The ultimate unity of his texts resides in the writing which, using intertextuality, abolishes all the limits between bloy's texts, putting the holy scriptures into central focus, and bloy's texts as illumination.