Ekphrasis et figura dans le texte michonien

Abstract

Pierre Michon’s postmodern writing oscillates between the sacred and the simulacrum, the sensible and the intelligible. It prompts the reader’s immersion into the text in order to make literature a force that acts. The present article examines this textual specificity in the light of ekphrasis and figura. It argues that Michon revives the rhetorical tradition (ekphrasis) and the Christian tradition (figura) to guide the posture of the reader and establish an aesthetics of performativity, mobilizing an old paradigm (enargeia) where vision is a highly valued sense. The article offers a succinct reading of Abbés (2002).