School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses

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Author: Andrews, Chris × End date: 1999 × Start date: 1980 ×

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    Poetry and cosmogony: science in the writing of Queneau and Ponge
    Andrews, Chris ( 1994)
    The tradition of scientific poetry, which reached high points in the work of the Presocratic philosopher-poets, Lucretius, and certain poets of the Renaissance, has been in decline since the end of the sixteenth century. In the middle of the present century Raymond Queneau and Francis Ponge attempted to revive it in three extensive poetic texts. Queneau's Petite cosmogonie portative updates the verse cosmogony as it was written by Scève and Du Bartas, drawing on the freshest scientific discoveries of its day and employing a ludic rhetoric indebted to Freud, Joyce and the surrealists. La Seine and the "Texte sur l’èlectricitè" are major components of Ponge's fragmentary cosmology; while looking back to Lucretius, they cite modern scientific texts extensively according to a strategy derived from Lautréamont. These little-known works are examined here in order to analyse the ways in which they recast scientific material, and to estimate the durability of the resulting poetry. In the light of this critical examination, a set of conditions for the viability of scientific poetry in the twentieth century is proposed. Because the attempt to revive scientific poetry runs counter to long-term trends it may seem futile, and certainly it is risky. But there is more at stake than the fortunes of individual poems. The three texts under examination defend poetry in the boldest fashion by laying claim to subject areas now generally ceded to other kinds of writing. At a time when, in France, the thematic domain of poetry has shrunk to an unprecedented extent, largely under the sustained influence of surrealism, the projects of Ponge and Queneau have an exemplary value, showing, and sometimes saying, that no part of human knowledge should be off limits for poetry, but also that poetry should not seek legitimacy by attempting to assimilate itself to another kind of discourse.