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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Los Angeles

Rethinking Queer Poetry:

Queerness in the French Lyric Tradition from 1819 to 1918 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in French and Francophone Studies by

Louise Alison Brown

2020

Copyright by

Louise Alison Brown

2020
ii

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Rethinking Queer Poetry:

Queerness in the French Lyric Tradition from 1819 to 1918 by

Louise Alison Brown

Doctor of Philosophy in French and Francophone Studies

University of California, Los Angeles, 2020

Professor Laure Murat, Chair

Current conceptions of queer poetry focus solely on poetry written by a queer poet or poetry written about a queer subject-matter. Consequently, they rely on primarily biographical does not derive solely from the queer identity of its author or the queer nature of its thematic content, and I call for a critical approach to queer poetry that supplements its conventionally biographical and thematic readings with more literary and theoretical readings. In order to rethink current conceptions of queer poetry, I examine the nature of both queerness and poetry, and I explore the ways in which the two intersect. I situate this exploration in the French literary tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a context marked by three cultural phenomena of particular interest a revitalization of the lyric tradition, a burgeoning interest in non-normative sexual and gender identities, and the emergence of modernité in the artistic domain. An iii examination of these intersecting phenomena provides a framework for exploring the intricate relation between poetry and queerness. On a discursive level, I demonstrate that the French lyric tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is shaped by, and shapes in return, expressions and conceptions of queerness. And on a more theoretical level, I develop the notion how or transgression of literary conventions such as the structure of the love lyric paradigm, the nature of versification, and the relation between text and page. As a result, I show that the literary field of queer poetry is in fact much larger and more diverse than we currently assume, and that a more comprehensive critical approach to queer poetry involves novel applications for both poetic theory and queer theory. iv The dissertation of Louise Alison Brown is approved.

Joseph E. Bristow

Françoise Lionnet

Zrinka Stahuljak

Laure Murat, Committee Chair

University of California, Los Angeles

2020
v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER 1: THE POET TYPE 20

SECTION 1: THE POÈTE MAUDIT (ACCURSED POET) 20 SECTION 2: THE POÈTE VOYOU (DELINQUENT POET) 26 SECTION 3: THE POÈTE VOYANT (ENLIGHTENED POET) 33

SECTION 4: THE FEMME POETE (POET WOMAN) 41

62

SECTION 1: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LYRIC 63

66

SECTION 2: THE TRANSLATED LYRIC 85

Renée Vivien and Transcreation 86

Pierre Louÿs and Pseudo-translation 103

Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and Auto-translation 111

SECTION 3: THE LOVE LYRIC 122

122
131
142
vi

CHAPTER 3: THE POETIC LINE 153

SECTION 1: SIGNIFYING THE POETIC LINE 153

Queer Connotations in Marcel Proust 154

Queer Impressions in Renée Vivien and Paul Verlaine 158 Queer Negations in Stéphane Mallarmé 172

SECTION 2: VERSIFYING THE POETIC LINE 181

Victor Hugo and the Dislocated Alexandrine 182

Marie Krysinska and Free Verse 187

Charles Baudelaire and the Prose Poem 198

SECTION 3: VISUALIZING THE POETIC LINE 213

Black on Whre 216

White on Black: 227

CONCLUSION 248

BIBLIOGRAPHY 254

vii VITA Before attending the University of California, Los Angeles, Louise Alison Brown earned a Master of Arts with Honors in French Literature in 2011 and a Bachelor of Arts with Highest Distinction in French in 2007. She completed both degrees at the University of Kansas,

Lawrence.

Louise taught English culture and language at the Université de Franche-Comté in

Besançon, France from 2008 to 2009 and worked as an administrator at the École Supérieure de

Commerce in Clermont-Ferrand, France from 2010 to 2011. At UCLA, she has taught a wide variety of courses covering French culture, language, and literature, as well as a selection of courses in the LGBTQ Studies Program. contemple in Volume 9, Issue 1 of Francosphères. 1

INTRODUCTION

What is queer poetry? Is it poetry written by a queer poet such as Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, or Renée Vivien? Is it poetry written about a queer subject-matter, like Charles

Lesbos Damned Women, which describe

scenes of Sapphic eroticism? Or is it poetry that challenges normative knowledges about the nature and functioning of the poetic genre, such as free-verse poems, A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance? Our conception of queer poetry depends in large part on our understanding of queerness, and it determines, to a large extent, our critical approach to poetic texts. Current conceptions of queer poetry focus solely on poetry written by a queer poet or poetry written about a queer subject-matter. Consequently, they rely

on primarily biographical and thematic readings of poetic texts. In this dissertation, I argue that a

author or the queer nature of its thematic content, and I call for a critical approach to queer poetry that supplements its conventionally biographical and thematic readings with literary and theoretical readings of poetic texts. In order to interrogate the concept of queer poetry, I consider the nature of both queerness and poetry, and I examine the ways in which the two can intersect. I situate this examination in the French literary tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a result of three concurrent cultural phenomena, this context fosters a particularly intricate relation between the poetic and the queer: Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, French society became increasingly fascinated wi 2 matter. This discursive phenomenon was paralleled by a sudden revitalization and rapid evolution of the French lyric tradition. After the relatively scarce poetic production of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the turn of the nineteenth century witnessed a proliferation of poetic works and a dynamic succession of large-scale poetic movements. And in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the notion of modernité, which began to take hold in the artistic domain, encouraged poets to experiment with formal and stylistic innovations that undermined prosodic conventions and destabilized conceptions of the poetic genre. I ask how these concurrent cultural phenomena intersected and influenced one another. In what way did the revitalized lyric tradition shape the discursive production of queerness in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France? And in what way was it shaped by it in return? How might the formal and stylistic poetic innovations characteristic of modernité constitute Under what circumstances can formal poetic features like versification be considered queer? And what insights can be gained from conceptualizing queerness in poetic terms? Such questions reveal important intersections between literary studies and LGBTQ studies, and they concern the critical potential of both poetic theory and queer theory.

State of the Field

Despite the rapidly growing field of LGBTQ+ studies and its frequent intersection with literary studies, the questions raised above remain largely, if not entirely, unanswered. The most in-depth study concerning the role of French literature in the discursive production of queerness Never Say I: Sexuality and the First Person in Colette, Gide, and Proust (2006). Lucey closely examines the social and historical contexts influencing twentieth century

literary articulations of queer sexualities, and he focuses his analysis on the literary technique of

3 first-person narration. By drawing from the field of linguistics, Lucey thoroughly explores the pragmatic and metapragmatic issues at stake in the writing and reception of literary works by Marcel Proust, André Gide, and Colette, who all narrated stories of same-sex desire in the first -person expressions of same-sex

desire in the context of poetry. As a literary form that is practically defined by its relation to the

and metapragmatic issues surrounding first-person articulations of queerness. In The Gendered Lyric: Subjectivity and Difference in Nineteenth-Century French Poetry (1999), Gretchen Schultz applies this level of systematic and contextualized analysis to lyric poetry, but in regards er, rather than queerness. By moments in nineteenth by overlaying categories (formal, rhetorical, ideological, and subjective) that define the lyric conceptions and representations of gender (6-7). When applied in relation to the notion of queerness, a similar degree of formal and stylistic analysis, which takes into account various aspects of lyric convention particular to nineteenth century French poetry, could provide novel insights into the ways in which the French lyric tradition has informed, and has been informed by, identity and desire. Lesbian Decadence: Representations in Art and Literature of Fin-de- Siècle France is the only extant critical work to consider the role of French lyric poetry in the discursive production of queerness. Published in French in 2005 and then in a revised English edition in 2016, this study in comparative literature traces literary and non-literary 4 representations of lesbianism at the turn of the twentieth century representations incorporates the work of poets such as Charles Baudelaire, Renée Vivien, and Pierre Louÿs, as well as lesser-known poets such as Lucie Delarue-Mardrus. And her second chapter on iverse poetic depictions of Sappho. discussion, however, does not take into consideration the formal, stylistic, and rhetorical characteristics of these poetic depictions. As such, Lesbian Decadence underlines xamine the nature of this role. Extant criticism exploring the intersections of the French lyric tradition and the discursive production of queerness in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France is limited not only in scope, but also in its critical Lyric Theory Reader: A Critical Anthology is the most recent and extensive collection of critical criticism and queer theory that generate different histories of lyric reading by foregrounding demonstrate writing and employ feminist readings. The only selection out of the five to address questions of throughout his poetic corpus. But since Yingling is concerned primarily with the content of such references, his critical approach is limited to entirely thematic readings of poetic texts. 5 In Queer Lyrics: Difficulty and Closure in American Poetry (2002), John Vincent reminds us that there is more to a poetic text than its thematic content. He therefore argues that critical approaches to poetic representations of queerness should not be limited to purely thematic readings. While there are many excellent s work or life, Vincent remarks, the lyric as a literary form has not yet been examined in relation to questions of queerness. readings of texts over more formalist approaches, which tend to produce transhistorical readings less concerned with recovering a queer literary tradition (xiii). He proposes that lyric form also ve been, since Whitman, used as tools in powerful survival and world-By focusing to the thematic oscillation between absolute availability and absolute unavailability, materiality sexual identit and Jack Spicer in a somewhat similar manner, by examining how their use of literary devices such as paradox, polysemy, and disembodiment affect their different expressions of queer identity or desire. By incorporating a consideration of literary devices into his analyses of poetry, Vincent thus moves beyond the purely thematic readings that characterize earlier critical approaches to poetic expressions of queerness. But his critical approach remains limited in another important way. Vincent states that his readings of poems by Crane, Moore, Ashbery, and Spicer 6 since he works entirely from within the domain of biographical readings, Vincent analyzes these poems in relation to their author, and more particularly, in relation to sexual identity. Critics after Vincent have continued to rely on such biographical readings when examining poetic expressions of queer identity or desire. This approach, however, implies an essentializing view of queerness. Binform the meanings of their poems, critics are, at best, assuming that such poets are primarily concerned with the expression of their own queer identity or desire. Or, somewhat more problematically, critics regardlesSuch an essentializing reading reduces the poetry of presumably queer poets to an expression, whether intentional or unintentional, of queerness. For this reason, my approach to queer poetry moves beyond primarily thematic and biographical readings. approach. In addition to incorporating a consideration of literary devices into my analyses of poems, I focus on the nature and function of lyric poetry as a literary form. I ask why an individual might chose to express a queer identity or desire through poetry in particular: How does this poetic expression differ from novelistic, theatrical, or non-literary expressions of queerness? In what ways does the poetic genre facilitate or complicate such expressions of queerness? How might characteristically lyric features, like rhyme scheme and meter, non-linear of, and even conceptions of, queer identity or desire? And in order to move beyond biographical readings, I examine the role of poetry in the production as well as the expression of queerness. eer identity, I consider how a poem might function as a source of queerness, in and of itself. 7 lyric subjectivity? Can manipulations of conventional rhyme scheme and meter constitute purely work to queer normative processes of meaning production? Such questions become possible when working with a definition of queer that is not limited in its application to the ideology of heteronormativity.

Defining Queer

Queerness is notoriously difficult to define. Its meaning has evolved significantly over the last few centuries; its current definitions are varied and sometimes even contradictory; and for certain theorists, queerness must, by its very nature, defy definition. The Merriam-Webster dictionary notes that the first uses of queer as an adjective can be traced back to the early 1500s, where it signified It was first And it first appeared as a noun later in that century to refer to a person whose sexuality or gender deviated from established norms . In the twentieth century, this nominal use of the word was popularized as a slur to stigmatize such individuals. And through its linguistic re-appropriation by members of the LGBTQ+ community, it has also come to function positively as an umbrella term with which any and all members of the community can self- identify. With the advent of Queer Theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s, scholars began exploring the signifying potential of queer as an adjective, and especially, as a verb. Informed by poststructuralism, scholars of queer theory avoided the nominal use of queer to denote an identity in the humanist sense (a stable and defining essence) by focusing instead on how it 8 might be employed to resist normative identities and challenge the normative knowledges thatquotesdbs_dbs26.pdfusesText_32

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