Sound studies, poétique et prosodie.
Cette page répertorie mes publications universitaires. Il s’agit de travaux de recherche portant sur différentes formes d’écoute dans l’œuvre du poète irlandais Seamus Heaney (1939-2013).
Bugging the Bog: Sonic Warfare, Earwitnessing and Eavesdropping in the Works of Seamus Heaney (Revue Miranda, 2019).
Abstract : Although the violence of the Troubles is sometimes directly shown in Seamus Heaney’s poetry, it is far more often indirectly suggested by sounds breaking into the domestic space or natural environment. In the poetic soundscapes his words compose, helicopter throbs and all sorts of drumming constitute a continuous background drone punctuated by many a blast. As it collects the various testimonies of a poet who was also an earwitness, this oeuvre keeps a trace of sonic attacks even if they do not leave impacts on walls or scars on bodies. This article will examine how Heaney’s poetic voice appropriates military bugging devices and engages in a sonic warfare, retaliating against intrusive sound-waves that haunt minds as much as homes.
Prosodic Echoes of Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop and Emily Dickinson in Seamus Heaney’s Poetry (Revue Polysèmes, 2018).
Abstract : Seamus Heaney, a poet dedicated to “echo soundings” (the compound is used in Station Island), wrote lines that probe bottomless bogs and inexhaustible word-hoards to dig up new music from them. Readers and researchers are familiar with this aspect. However, another form of echo sounding has remained rather off the academic sonar so far: the art of alluding to another poet through prosody and sound effects. Even if Echo has no voice of her own, it is her call that Heaney answers in “Personal Helicon” (the last poem in Death of Naturalist), thus refusing to follow the path of Narcissus: “To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring / Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme / To see myself, to set the darkness echoing”. Interestingly enough, this sound portrait is more than a self-portrait. Indeed, “Personal Helicon” echoes Robert Frost’s “For Once, Then, Something”, not only because of its theme (wells), but also because of its sounds. Many echoes of the kind can be heard in Heaney’s works. This paper will illustrate and examine three different modes of echoing: echo as a mirror-effect, an evocation and a cleaving. It will be an opportunity to show how Heaney’s poetic ear responded to American voices such as those of Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop and—maybe the least obvious example—Emily Dickinson. Heaney, a voice lover and a broadcaster, echoed them all in his Northern-Irish voice, thus broadening the range of his “own frequency” (again from Station Island).
« That day I’ll be in step with what escaped me »: Senses and the Rhythm of Error in the Work of Seamus Heaney (Literature and Error, 2018).
About this book : Literature and Error comprises a series of essays by French scholars who seek to lay down the foundations of a theory that would argue for the productivity of errors and mistakes in literary works. While the « necessity of errors » has repeatedly been tackled from a philosophical angle, rarely has the demonstration been attempted from the standpoint of literature. Beyond the thematic importance of errors (evidenced in the age-old motifs of learning from one’s errors, mistaken identities, malapropism, comic or tragic misunderstandings, hamartia, the fallibility of man, etc.), the proposition is made here that errare is not just humanum but also literarium—that « Erring Becomes Literature » with or, preferably, without corrections. Indeed, approached from various angles, it is the literariness of errors and mistakes that this joint study sets out to explore. Modern and contemporary Anglo-American literature structurally accommodates and even welcomes errors. Ranging from Edgar Allan Poe, James Joyce, and Jonathan Franzen to Robert Browning and Elizabeth Bishop, the authors and works discussed assess the seaworthiness of errors when launched into deep (literary) water. Viewed in that light, errors not only cease to be errors of something (of taste, conception, judgment, calculation), they become errors per se, valued for their own sake. Deliberately comprehensive and broad-ranging, this volume should appeal not just to scholars and students but also to readers who share an interest in theory and close reading alike.
« At my buried ear »: Seamus Heaney’s pastoral soundings (Green Studies, 2016)
Abstract : This article takes a close look at the sounding process at work in Heaney’s pastoral poetry from an eco-critical perspective. Focusing on how Heaney relates to sonic environments in rural places, and on the way he recreates them in poetic language, it shows that Heaney’s work calls for an active form of listening. This practice, conscious of the necessity to preserve sound-troves in a way similar to archaeological finds, evolves into a poetic counterintelligence that proves the power of sound. Since Heaney defines sound as an essential element of pastoral poetry, it can be argued that his pastoral poems are sound events in their own right, meant to enter our sonic environment to educate our ears and raise questions of acoustic ecology.
« A name unmade » : écueils de la commémoration dans « In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge » de Seamus Heaney (Monument et modernité, 2015)
Résumé : Avec ses ellipses, ses digressions, ses enjambements et ses rimes imparfaites, « In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge » peut sembler un peu bancal. Il est alors tentant de reprendre les mots de Ledwidge, « a name unmade », pour parler d’une élégie à son image, décousue, « an elegy unmade ». Faut-il pour autant y voir un défaut ? C’est justement par cet aspect relâché, délié, que la voix lyrique peut se faire entendre, loin des pressions de l’histoire. C’est aussi par là qu’elle peut mêler l’ironie au pathos, sauver Ledwidge de l’oubli dans la plus grande ambiguïté, en gardant ses distances. Ce monument de mots volontairement bancal tire peut-être sa force de ses imperfections manifestes. « In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge » n’est pas une véritable commémoration par-delà les divisions du peuple irlandais, et ne cherche pas à l’être. Mais l’ironie vise également Ledwidge et son œuvre : cette élégie ne constitue pas davantage un véritable hommage littéraire. Loin de s’imposer d’un bloc, contrairement au monument public de Portstewart, elle repose entièrement sur l’ouverture d’une méditation personnelle et distanciée.
Trésors de guerre et traités de paix : Seamus Heaney, lecteur du Beowulf, co-écrit avec Laurent Folliot, (Mémoire du Moyen-Age dans la poésie contemporaine, 2014).
L’occasion de s’intéresser à Heaney comme traducteur du Beowulf. Une histoire de violence, de fourche et de diapason.
Présentation de l’ouvrage : Ce livre, suivant la proposition d’Apollinaire, «prend au sérieux les fantômes», explore un phénomène insistant de «revenance» celui de la référence médiévale, occupant une place importante dans la poésie contemporaine. Cette place, affichée, est loin d’être circonscrite: la mémoire du Moyen Âge traverse aujourd’hui des oeuvres relevant d’univers poétiques multiples. Très présente dans la poésie de langue française, elle est sans frontière: on la retrouve dans la plupart des langues européennes ainsi que sur le continent américain. Souvent convoquée par des oeuvres perçues comme expérimentales, elle peut être paradoxale, nous obligeant à penser cette apparente contradiction: l’invention contemporaine et la résurgence médiévale comme procédant d’un même geste anachronique, inventif et prospectif. C’est ce geste que ce volume veut restituer, en saisissant les lignes de force de la rencontre du texte poétique et du matériau médiéval. Particulièrement accueillante au fonctionnement de la mémoire, l’expérience poétique ne délivre pas le passé «tel qu’en lui-même»: le présent du poème le recompose par bribes et le fait exister autrement. Pour mettre au jour la nature de cette invention poétique et la spécificité de la référence médiévale qui s’y joue, le livre fait dialoguer vivants et morts, mêle les voix, critiques et poétiques, et recueille des poèmes inédits du Moyen Âge et d’aujourd’hui.
