La conférence sera donnée en anglais.
Le conférencier :
Françoise Meltzer, professor of French, Comparative Literature, and the Divinity School, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago, USA.
Résumé :Baudelaire is frequently described as obsessed with sin, but believing in no redemption. After 1853, the influence of the brilliant but extreme and pessimistic Joseph de Maistre is clear, and the earlier influence of the socialist Proudhon fades. In reading the prose poem "Assommons les pauvres," however, one can see that Baudelaire retains the influence of both. Original sin is fundamental and inescapable, as Maistre argues, but compassion for the poor remains in the poet, almost malgré lui. A reading of the poem, and a discussion of the most important ideas of Maistre for the poet, show an ambivalence that is contradictory (as scholars have noted). Such contradiction, however, displays a textual and mental strabismus, which will be the subject of my talk.