Contemporary French Literature

Title: 'Images and Texts in Dialogue in Contemporary Poetry and Art in France (20th and 21st Century)'.
The course aims to show how certain models, themes and techniques from the visual arts of the past and the contemporary have been fundamental in elaborating poetic writing in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course will make use of interventions by lecturers from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, artists themselves and experts in contemporary art and the grammar of the image: Prof. Maria Cristina Galli, lecturer in Anatomy of Art, and Prof. Pasquale Polidori, lecturer in Painting Techniques. Through the presentation of their artistic production, the theme of anatomy of the Creative Processes (M.C. Galli) and research poetry will be addressed by studying authors such as Jean Le Gac (P. Polidori). Starting from the observation of the extent to which the presence of representations (drawings, paintings, engravings, collages, photographs, hypertexts, movie images) and iconographic intertexts (aimed at French art, but not only) is preponderant in poetic writing (implicitly or explicitly), we will reflect on the gaps and balances between figuration and discourse, on their respective grammars and the question of the use of the image in the contemporary world. The course is divided into three parts. The first two, closely interconnected, aim to provide an overview of 20th and 21st-century poetry in France, starting with Mallarmé. Thanks to an anthology of poetic texts (by Apollinaire, Ponge, Bonnefoy, Fourcade, Quintane, Le Gac, among others), the textual architectures, the different models and devices they inspire and above all their relationship with the literary and visual image will be investigated. The stylistic-rhetorical and thematic motifs of the works analysed will also be illustrated, and their historical-cultural reference context will be studied. The third module will take a more seminar-like and collaborative form, and contemporary ways of interweaving writing, action and life will be examined. In addition to analysing the relationships between poetry, literature and art at work in an 'autobiographical poem' (Dominique Fourcade, 'vous m'avez fait chercher', 2021), a workshop coordinated by Prof. Polidori on photographic and poetic performativity starting with Jean Le Gac is planned.