Browsing by Author "Noirot, Corinne"

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    Entre Deux Airs
    Noirot, Corinne (2014-02-21)
    Corinne Noirot, former fellow of the École Normale Supérieure, is a just-tenured Associate Professor of French at Virginia Tech. Author of “Entre deux airs”: style simple et ethos poétique chez Clément Marot et Joachim Du Bellay [2011] (Paris: Hermann éditeurs, 2013), she also co-edited the scholarly collection “Revelations of Character.” Ethos and Moral Philosophy in Montaigne (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007). Other publications include articles on verse by Marot, Peletier, Du Bellay, Ronsard, La Taille, Vian, and Goudezki; and prose works by Rabelais, Montaigne, and Bégaudeau. She is currently analyzing the complete works Jean de la Taille, a French soldier-poet of the late sixteenth-century, from the perspective of drama as an active principle in his puzzling yet coherent œuvre.
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    « L'illusion de l'amour n'est pas l'amour trouvé » : Camp and queer desire in Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, and Peau d'âne
    Finch, Frank Frederick (Virginia Tech, 2020-11-03)
    Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964), Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967), and Peau d'âne (1970), though quite popular with the public at their time of release and continuing to leave an aesthetic stamp on contemporary cinema, have been received by some critics and viewers in general as pure contrivance with little edification. This thesis puts forward, however, that such interpretations of these Demy musicals as primarily saccharine, superficial, and light miss the elemental melancholy belied by the charming varnish. Here, the three are unified as a triptych that thematizes and aestheticizes lack and desire in ways that can speak directly to the queer viewer. This thesis first situates the films among criticism from the 1960s to the present, opening a discourse on the potential for diverse political and aesthetic readings of Demy's work that continues to the present queer reading. Through a method of narratological close reading, I unify the three films as a triptych, each a variation on themes of isolation, absence, and amorous lack. Jean-Pierre Berthomé's Jacques Demy et les raciness du rêve (1982) is a rich resource in presenting these three seemingly distinct films as a totality. Once justified for study as a triptych, my thesis presents a queer reading of the films' ostensibly heterosexual narrative structures. With the buttressing of the queer theory of Harold Beaver, Andrew Ross, and Michael Koresky, among others, this chapter demonstrates how the narratives of longing Demy crafts can speak to the queer viewer and transcend a heterosexual framework. Finally, my thesis moves beyond narrative to another continuity, the aesthetic of camp present throughout the triptych. Through an exploration of the interconnectivity of camp, gender performance, and seduction, drawing on scholars Susan Sontag, Judith Butler, and Jean Baudrillard, respectively, the aesthetic of Demy's triptych is situated in a queer sensibility. Catherine Deneuve, Demy's "princesse idéale," is read as the reification of this sensibility in her potent performance of gender at the confluence of masculine and feminine qualities, as well as the ideal tabula rasa onto which the queer viewer's desire and longing can be projected. Ultimately, the triptych's reconciliation of the visually confectionary and the narratively somber is celebrated, as it points to a victory over tragedy through affective agency.
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    Mouvoir dans l'espace: une esthétique musico-poétique chez Debussy et Mallarmé
    Bowman, Daniel Stewart (Virginia Tech, 2013-06-12)
    The relationship between music and poetry dramatically changed in France during the nineteenth century.  Music took a prominent place in artistic life, and certain figures of the era argued for its superiority over poetry.  Richard Wagner convinced many artists of the time of the need to subsume poetry into music for the sake of creating a Gesamtkunstwerk, or a total work of art.  The result of this dialogue can best be examined by studying the relationship between the composer Claude Debussy and the poet Stéphane Mallarmé.  In response to the challenge issued by Wagner, Mallarmé argued strongly for the place of poetry.  Though he argued against Wagnerism specifically, Mallarmé admired the expressive capabilities of music, which is a constant presence in his poetry.  Debussy found his greatest source of inspiration from the poets of Mallarmé's generation.  Rather than following the example of Wagner and other Romantic-era composers, Debussy saw poets as the avant-garde, and sought to capture their poetry in his music.   Both of these figures, inspired by the relationship between music and poetry, produced very forward-thinking works, and serve as transitional figures for their respective arts.  Each using techniques inspired by the other\'s art, Debussy and Mallarmé both make use of non-traditional forms, a sense of movement, and a profound use of silence in order to best express the Ideal.