Sociopoétique du jeu de cartes dans la nouvelle du xixe siècle

The 19th century is inhabited by the demon of the game. Games were the subject of press articles and technical works (treatises, reviews, manuals) were dedicated to them. Literature was not left out either, whether in France or in the rest of Europe. In this article, we propose to make our contribution to the sociopoetic analysis of the game and the toy through the study of the specific case of the literary representation of the card game in two short stories: "La Dame de pique" ("Пиковая дама", 1834) by Alexander Pushkin, and "Le Dessous de cartes d’une partie de whist" (1850) by Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly. Apart from their generic affiliation and their link with the world of playing cards (explicit from the title), the two short stories are similar in terms of the core of their plot (a murder against the background of a card game) but also in terms of the supernatural features that are scattered throughout them.

Le dandy, maître de l’art de plaire en déplaisant

According to Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, the obligation of every dandy is to become a true master in the art of pleasing by displeasing. His words, his tricks, his intrigues will give birth to the stereotype of the dandy conveyed by his contemporaries throughout the 19th century. By referring to the critical texts of the time and modern critical texts, we will attempt to review the main roles of a dandy: a master of elegance, idle master, misogynist master, impassive master, and finally, insolent master. The paper aims to prove that hidden behind the mask of the original eccentric is a rebel protecting his individuality against the surrounding mediocrity.

« L’Homme à qui je devais le plus après mon père et ma mère » : Léon Bloy disciple de Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly

Père de substitution, mentor, tuteur, objet d’admiration et d’imitation, Barbey d’Aurevilly remplit pour Bloy, depuis leur rencontre, les fonctions d’un maître. Parmi tous ceux qui se revendiqueront d’un héritage de Barbey, Bloy semble en effet avoir été le disciple le plus fervent du Connétable des Lettres. Tout en nous concentrant en particulier sur la manière dont les figures d’autorité qui renvoient à Barbey se construisent chez Bloy, nous nous proposons de voir comment ces deux écrivains, qui sont entièrement du côté du figuratif, donnent une densité particulière à leur rapport à travers le travail de l’image qui prend une place centrale et essentielle dans la construction du lien entre un maître et un disciple. Cette enquête nous amènera en outre à considérer qu’une telle relation de va ni sans prise de distance ponctuelle ni sans agacement réciproque. Loin de s’effacer devant le maître, Bloy se construit clairement moins dans l’ombre que dans la lumière d’un maître qui l’éclaire.

« Un cœur désolé, une santé dévastée »

Although Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly has always been an enemy of Naturalism and its theoretical assumptions, he had to deal with the presentation rules of the ‘clinical’ romance while describing his characters’ suffering bodies. On the one hand, the physiognomy theories, very dear to Balzac, enrich Barbey’s modes of expression and justify the analogy between body and soul; on the other, it is not possible to describe the characters’ bodies and to reveal the mystery behind them. Despite this, the lack of psychological analysis in the récit is compensated by metaphorical characterisation: indeed, similes, metaphors, antithesis and oxymorons enrich the description of characters revealing their main passions and features. The aim of this article is to show, by means of the text analysis of some passages, that the realistic details of descriptions are not vain if related to their metaphorical meaning and that, in so doing, the author overcomes the impasse of the rational scientific observation and the physiognomic interpretation.