Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Ascetics in literature'

This thesis is concerned with the poetics of impoverishment as found in the works of Saint-Denys Garneau and Samuel Beckett. It seeks to shed light on the reactivation of a Christian ascetic heritage within modern writing forms (poetic and narrative) and also, more specifically, to develop a novel analysis of these works from the perspective of their points of overlap. This thesis presents analysis of the relationships between voice and body (part I), of the doppelganger and self-generation figures (part II), of prayer, desert and image motifs (part III) throughout the totality of both corpuses. The comparative reading of the works of Beckett and Garneau highlights the complex relationship they entertain with certain Christian schemes (incarnation, sin, asceticism, kenosis) which they put into play on a properly literary level. This investigation also reveals that, within both works, these Christian schemes echo the aesthetic concerns of modernity (auto-foundation of the subject, authenticity, autonomy and purification of forms).
Key terms: Saint-Denys Garneau, Samuel Beckett, literary modernity, asceticism, poverty, doppelganger, Christianism, French-Canadian literature, French literature, Irish literature

This thesis describes Eliot and Flaubert’s shared fascination for the figure of the ascetic saint, with special attention given to The Waste Land and La Tentation de saint Antoine. I examine how the structure, style and themes of these two works in particular show the authors updating into a modernist context the model of the trial they inherit from saintly literature. I explore in detail the varied connotations that the saint attracts, structuring my analysis on the basis of dialectical tensions which allow me to trace the relation of the saint’s experience to the theory and praxis of the two authors: the contrasting forms of discourse within each text, scientific and religious thought as distinct but potentially complicit approaches to knowledge, or the contrapuntal relationship of desert and city, allow me to illustrate the texts’ enactment of a central paradox of the ascetic’s via negativa – where the comprehensive vantage point to which they aspire is only achieved through loss. I give extensive attention to the techniques and structure of each work, in which I elaborate the operative significance of the saint’s emblematic status. My analysis culminates in a reading of the Tentation and The Waste Land that stresses their relation to an ascetic paradigm, which not only inheres through the recurrence of various motifs in the work of Eliot and Flaubert but is characteristic of modernism more generally. On the one hand expanding on undeveloped hints in Eliot criticism, regarding both the influence of Flaubert and The Waste Land’s relation to the saint’s trial, whilst on the other allowing Flaubert’s Tentation to benefit from the greater critical scrutiny given to its more canonical counterpart, the thesis enhances our understanding of both the individual authors and the broader intellectual climate to which they belong.

This thesis examines the role that the motif of divine abandonment played in the exegetical and ascetical literature of late antiquity. Divine abandonment of the soul was an integral part of the spiritual life. Its "normativeness" was related to the notion of divine paideia: God instructed the soul by abandoning the soul to ethical trials. This paideia had eschatological implications: divine abandonment highlighted the eschatological orientation of the Christian faith. Divine abandonment of Christ, however, is treated in Christological, rather than ascetical, terms. The experience of abandonment by the ascetics was not based on a "Christ-like" ethical model: Christ's abandonment was only connected to the ascetical abandonment within the scope of divine providence. The first part introduces the Patristic exegesis on the Song of Songs. It shows that Patristic exegesis related divine abandonment of the soul to ethical trials and highlights the role of the motif as part of divine paideia that leads the soul to an eschatological ethical perfection. The second part discusses Christ's abandonment on the cross, which Patristic literature handled with a certain hesitancy, even uncertainty. The last part examines the ascetical tradition. The motif illustrated God’s providential care for the ascetic soul where God remedied the soul's weakness and led her to the ethical fulfilment in the eschaton. This part also addresses the subtle way in which ascetical literature envisaged Christ as a spiritual model. The conclusion that this thesis draws is that it is within the theological framework of divine paideia and eschatology that the Patristic literature understood the notion of divine abandonment. Furthermore, it suggests that it is in this framework of their common tradition that the Eastern and Western spiritual traditions might mutually approach and understand each other.

Cette thèse analyse la Correspondance de Jérôme comme une pratique sociale, dans sa forme littéraire et dans son contenu idéologique. Les lettres de Jérôme exposent et promeuvent l’idéal de vie ascétique qui repose sur l’expérimentation de divers types de souffrances. Le moine développe une pluralité de discours pour répondre aux besoins de la pluralité de son lectorat et des différents contextes sociaux et culturels auxquels il fait face.Les pensées philosophiques grecques et stoïciennes concevaient les pratiques ascétiques comme des entraînements à la vertu. Jérôme a dressé des parallèles entre disciplines et techniques ascétiques profanes et chrétiennes. L’ascèse hiéronymienne prend appui sur ces différentes traditions pour former un modèle de vie ascétique inédit.L’ascétisme promu par Jérôme change de forme et d’intensité entre sa jeunesse, son échec érémitique à Chalcis et sa rencontre avec le cercle de l’Aventin. Il se fait progressivement le chantre d’une ascèse présentée comme modérée et forge un nouvel ethnotype de l’ascète à partir de l’ethnotype du noble romain. Le moine tourne le dos au message évangélique et diffuse un ascétisme réservé aux nobles : dans une logique propagandiste, il produit un nouveau type de prestige spirituel qui transcende le prestige social.L’importance de la figure de l’ascète dans le discours hiéronymien pose la question de sa fonction sociale. Les grands ascètes se caractérisent par leur mépris pour les activités profanes et par leur patience face aux rigueurs et aux souffrances : ils sont indispensables à la société du IVème siècle pour susciter et préserver le dégoût des plaisirs faciles chez les fidèles
This thesis analyzes Jerome's Correspondence as a social practice, in its literary form and in its ideological content. Jerome's letters expose and promote the ideal of ascetic life which is based on the experimentation of various types of suffering. The monk develops a plurality of discourses to meet the needs of the plurality of his readership and the different social and cultural contexts that he faces.The Greek and Stoic philosophical thoughts conceived ascetic practices as entrainments to virtue. Jerome has established parallels between philosophical and Christian ascetic disciplines and techniques. The monk’s asceticism based on these different traditions creates a new model of ascetic life.The form and the intensity of the asceticism promoted by Jerome change between his youth, his eremitical failure at Chalcis and his encounter with the circle of the Aventine. The monk progressively promotes an asceticism presented as moderate. He forges a new ethnotype of the ascetic from the ethnotype of the Roman noble. The monk turns his back on the gospel message and spreads an asceticism restricted to the nobles : his propaganda campaign produces a new type of spiritual prestige that transcends social prestige.The importance of the figure of the ascetic in Jerome’s discourse raises the question of its social function. The great ascetics are characterized by their contempt for secular activities and by their patience to face austerities and sufferings. They are essential to the society of the fourth century to arouse and preserve the disgust of easy pleasures among the faithful

Masters of Art
study analyses the concept of al-Karāmah al-Sūfīyah (the Sufi Saintly Miracle) in both its religious and literary dimensions. The researcher will shed more light on this genre of narrative literary phenomena by developing its definition and placing it in the social and historical context of the Sufi thought as a whole. Many communities in the Islamic world embrace and practice the Sufi doctrine and also believe in the Ṣūfī Sheikhs’ saintly miracles and its paranormal aspects, which they also consider to be parallel in its sacredness to the miracles of the Prophets. Furthermore, in this study the researcher will not only focus on the religious significance of the saintly miracle but also on their literary approach and aesthetic dimensions. In fact many of the contemporary Arab scholars and Litterateurs categorize this narrative discourse to fall under the cloak of al-Adab al-‘ajāibī (miraculous literature) due to the nature of its narrative style and structure from which it achieves its goals, such as: Myth – Legend – Superstition – Storytelling, etc. The study will be mainly qualitative. It is a content analysis study in the sense that the researcher will analyse the stylistic, formal and rhetorical techniques of the saintly miracles’ discourse with specific reference to extracts taken from al- Sheikh al-Hassan al- Shadili and al-Sheikh Abdelssalam Bin Machich. The study will use an eclectic theoretical and conceptual framework which combines the historical approach with the reception theory.

Le présent travail propose la première édition critique, annotée et commentée, de Trabajos del vicio (Madrid, 1680) écrite, comme il est démontré, par le prédicateur et frère augustin Simón de Castelblanco. Par une approche ecdotique — en lien avec les deux disciplines complémentaires que sont la bibliographie documentaire et la critique textuelle —, il a été possible de clarifier l'histoire du texte et d‘identifier son véritable auteur. La phase de la recensio révèle qu'il existe une édition de l‘œuvre de 1680 et une « émission » de 1684 qui présente deux états d‘édition. Ces émissions sont le produit de la stratégie commerciale orchestrée par l'éditeur Lorenzo García et le libraire Juan Fernández pour remédier à l'échec financier qu'a dû représenter la commercialisation de l'œuvre. Le texte critique, accompagné d'un important appareil de notes, a été rigoureusement établi à partir de l'exemplaire numérisé du BDH (R-8617) de l’editio princeps. Compte tenu de la rareté des ouvrages philologiques sur l'auteur et l'œuvre, l'étude préliminaire a mobilisé différentes sources documentaires telles que des catalogues biobibliographiques ou des recueils sur les frères augustins pour traiter en profondeur les aspects liés à la biographie et à l'œuvre de Simón de Castelblanco. En outre, par l‘étude de la réception de l‘œuvre et l‘analyse comparative avec d‘autres romans baroques, Trabajos del vicio s‘inscrit dans le corpus du « long roman » du dernier quart du XVIIe siècle, caractérisé par une littérature représentative d‘une morale ascétique forte
This work proposes the first critical edition, with annotations and introductory study, of Trabajos del vicio, afanes del amor vicioso (Madrid, 1680), written, as well demonstrated, by the Augustinian friar and preacher Simon de Castelblanco. Following ecdotic procedures - in connection with two complementary disciplines such as material bibliography and textual criticism - it has been possible to clarify the history of the text and prove its true author. The phase of the recensio reveals the existence of an edition of 1680, and an issue of 1684, which presents two states of edition. The issue is the product of the commercial strategy orchestrated by the printer-publisher Lorenzo García and the bookseller Juan Fernández with the intention of overcoming the lucrative failure that the commercialization of the novel must have entailed. The critical text, accompanied by an extensive annotation apparatus, has been rigorously fixed from the digitized copy of the BDH (R-8617), after verifying the equality of the rest of the copies. Given the scarcity of philological studies on the author and the novel, the preliminary study has used different documentary sources such as bio-bibliographic sourcebooks and compendia on Augustinian friars, dealing in depth with aspects related to the biography and work of Simon de Castelblanco. Likewise, through the perspective of the reception studies and the comparative analysis with other contemporary novels, Trabajos del vicio is framed within the corpus of the ―long novelǁ of the last quarter of the 17th century, characterized by an exemplary literature of strong ascetic morality

Art and mysticism in the 21st century. Artistic creation as an approach to spirituality is the result of a deep study carried out from the point of view of artistic creation. A study based on mysticism, on the mystics of the 16th and 17th centuries and on the associated symbology and its influence in the art of the 21st century. A research work that takes as reference an endless range of fields such as philosophy, psychology, theology, history, aesthetics and art among others, to go in depth into mysticism, mystery and spirituality. The main objective of the work is the study of mysticism and its influence in art, focusing more intensely on the process of creation of the artistic project that has been carried out for this thesis. From references such as Santa Teresa de Jesus and San Juan de la Cruz, it has been developed a whole poetic and symbolic universe that has been used to generate the proposed sculptural resources. Starting from this analysis, the concepts of spirituality and contemplation, dialogue, pain and silence have been taken to make each one of the personal artistic proposals. In our case this process has helped us, on the one hand, to discover our own inside, our being, in order to search for the absolute and, on the other hand, to propose new methods of creation, new ways of dealing with art itself. A whole field of concepts and references that have helped us to build our own artistic and plastic discourse. This study serves to demonstrate the influence of these authors, themes and symbologies in contemporary art. Good evidence of this are the exhibitions that reveal these concepts, as well as the artists who make use of them. This Doctoral Thesis is a place for reflection on methods of creation and it allows us to appreciate the similarities of the creative process between the mystic and the artist. Both paths bring us closer to our inner world and show that both art and mysticism imply a transforming dimension in mankind.
Arte y mística en el siglo XXI. La creación artística como una aproximación a la espiritualidad es la consecuencia de un profundo estudio, llevado a cabo desde el punto de vista de la creación artística, sobre la mística, sobre los místicos del siglo XVI y XVII y sobre la simbología asociada, y su influencia en el arte del siglo XXI. Una investigación que toma como referente un sin fin de campos como la filosofía, la psicología, la teología, la historia, la estética y el arte, entre otros, para adentrarse en la mística, en el misterio y en la espiritualidad. El trabajo tiene como objetivo principal el estudio de la mística y su influencia en el arte, centrándose, más intensamente, en el proceso de creación del proyecto artístico que se ha realizado para esta tesis. A partir de referentes como santa Teresa de Jesús y san Juan de la Cruz, se ha elaborado todo un universo poético y simbólico que ha servido para generar los recursos plásticos propuestos. Partiendo de este análisis, se han tomado los conceptos de espiritualidad y contemplación, diálogo, dolor y silencio, para elaborar cada una de las propuestas artísticas personales. En nuestro caso, este proceso, nos ha ayudado, por un lado, a descubrir nuestro propio interior, nuestro ser, con el fin de la búsqueda de lo absoluto y, por otro, a plantear nuevos métodos de creación, nuevas maneras de enfrentarse al hecho artístico. Todo un campo de conceptos y referentes que nos han servido para construir nuestro propio discurso artístico y plástico. Este estudio sirve para evidenciar la influencia de estos autores, estas temáticas y estas simbologías en el arte contemporáneo, prueba de ello son las exposiciones que ponen de manifiesto actualmente estos conceptos, así como los artistas que hacen uso de ellos. Esta Tesis Doctoral supone un lugar para la reflexión sobre métodos de creación y nos permite apreciar las semejanzas del proceso creativo entre el místico y el artista. Ambos caminos nos acercan a nuestro mundo interior y ponen de manifiesto, que tanto el arte como la mística conllevan una dimensión transformadora en el hombre.
Art i mística al segle XXI. La creació artística com una aproximació a l'espiritualitat és la consequ¿ència d'un profund estudi, dut a terme des del punt de vista de la creació artística, sobre la mística, sobre els místicos del segle XVI i XVII i sobre la simbologia associada, i la seva influència en l'art del segle XXI. Una recerca que pren com a referent un sense fi de camps com la filosofia, la psicologia, la teologia, la història, l'estètica i l'art, entre uns altres, per endinsar-se en la mística, en el misteri i en l'espiritualitat. El treball té com a objectiu principal l'estudi de la mística i la seua influència en l'art, centrant-se, més intensament, en el procés de creació del projecte artístic que s'ha realitzat per a aquesta tesi. A partir de referents com a Santa Teresa de Jesús i Sant Joan de la Creu, s'ha elaborat tot un univers poètic i simbòlic que ha servit per generar els recursos plàstics proposats. Partint d'aquesta anàlisi, s'han pres els conceptes d'espiritualitat i contemplació, diàleg, dolor i silenci, per elaborar cadascuna de les propostes artístiques personals. En el nostre cas, aquest procés, ens ha ajudat; d'una banda, a descobrir el nostre propi interior, el nostre ésser; amb la finalitat de la cerca de l'absolut i, per un altre, a plantejar nous mètodes de creació, noves maneres d'enfrontar-se al fet artístic. Tot un camp de conceptes i referents que ens han servit per construir el nostre propi discurs artístic i plàstic. Aquest estudi serveix per evidenciar la influència d'aquests autors, aquestes temàtiques i aquestes simbologies en l'art contemporani. Prova d'això són les exposicions, que posen de manifest actualment aquests conceptes, així com els artistes que fan ús d'ells. Aquesta Tesi Doctoral suposa un lloc per a la reflexió sobre mètodes de creació i ens permet apreciar les semblances del procés creatiu entre el místic i l'artista. Tots dos camins ens acosten al nostre món interior i posen de manifest, que tant l'art com la mística comporten una dimensió transformadora en l'home.
Mañas García, A. (2017). Arte y mística en el siglo XXI. La creación artística como una aproximación a la espiritualidad [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/90530
TESIS

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2004. Graduate Programme in English.
Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 315-337). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ99152

Ascetic Citizens: Religious Austerity and Political Crisis in Anglo-American Literature, 1681-1799, attends to a number of scenes of voluntary self-restraint in literary, political, and religious writings of the long eighteenth century, scenes that stage, what Alexis de Tocqueville calls, “daily small acts of self-denial” in the service of the nation. Existing studies of asceticism in Anglo-American culture during the period are extremely slim. Ascetic Citizens fills an important gap in the scholarship by re-framing religious practices of seclusion and self-denial as a broadly-defined set of civic practices that permeate the political, religious, and gender discourses of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Anglo-American culture. This thesis focuses on the transatlantic relevance of the ascetic citizen—a figure whose rhetorical utility derives from its capacity, as a marker of political and religious moderation, to deploy individual practices of religious austerity as a means of suturing extreme political binaries during times of political crisis. My conception of asceticism’s role in Anglo-American society is informed by an understanding of ascetic citizenship as a cluster of concepts and cultural practices linking the ascetic’s focus on bodily control to republican theories of political subjectivity. The notion that political membership presupposes a renunciation of personal liberties on the part of the individual citizen represents one of the key assumptions of ascetic citizenship. The future guarantee of individual political rights is ensured by present renunciations of self-interest. As such, the ascetic citizen functions according to the same economy by which the religious ascetic’s right to future eternal reward is ensured by present acts of pious self-abnegation. That is to say, republican political liberty is enabled by what we might call an ascetic prerequisite in which the voluntary self-sacrifice of civic rights guarantees the state’s protection of such rights from the infringements of one’s neighbour. While the abstemious nature of ascetic practice implies efficiency grounded in economic frugality, bodily self-restraint, and physical isolation, the ascetic citizen functions as the sanctioned perversion of a normative devotional practice that circumvents the division between profane self-interest and sacred disinterestedness. The relevance of ascetic citizenship to political culture is its political fluidity, its potential to exceed the ideological functions of the dominant culture while revealing the tension that exists between endorsement of, and dissent from, the civic norm. Counter-intuitively, the ascetic citizen’s practice is marked by a celebration of moderation, of the via media. Forging a space at the threshold between endorsement/dissent, the ascetic citizen maps the dialectic movement of cultural extremism, forging a rhetorically useful site of ascetic deferral characterized by the subject’s ascetic withdrawal from making critical decisions. Ascetic Citizens provides a detailed investigation of how eighteenth-century Anglo-American authors such as Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Hannah Webster Foster, and Charles Brockden Brown conceive of individual subjectivity as it exists in the pause or retired moment between competing political orders.

This dissertation examines the representation of ascetic renunciation in early modern drama, focusing in particular on the way asceticism functions as a tool of political agency. This study argues that the act of renunciation is essentially performative and public, directed outward to an audience whose responses the performer hopes to shape or direct. The specific political significance of ascetic acts varies according to the status and social position of those who perform and receive them, potentially functioning as a discourse both of resistance and of control. In early modern England, traditional asceticism's association with heterodox catholicism lent it an extra-normative and subversive quality that found utility in acts of resistance. However, ascetic or renunciatory discourse could also be utilized in the exercise of power by monarchs, both as a discourse of legitimation and as an act of public image construction. To help explain this flexibility, this study utilizes the sociolinguistic theories of M.M. Bakhtin, V.N. Voloshinov, and Pierre Bourdieu, all of whom offer models for interpreting language in shifting contexts and across discursive fields. The introduction defines asceticism as performative and potentially political, before tracing some of the relevant historical developments of asceticism from the Middle Ages to the sixteenth century. Chapter One analyzes the representation of asceticism in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, focusing in particular on the character of Isabella, whose celibate vows place her in conflict with mechanisms of power. Chapter Two examines the literary representation of asceticism in both medieval and early modern contexts by reading Shakespeare and Fletcher's The Two Noble Kinsmen in relation to its Chaucerian source material, The Knight's Tale. Chapter Three shifts to an examination of ascetic postures and discourse by monarchs, considering first The Escorial, Philip II's monastic palace, and then moving to a reading of Elizabeth I's translation of the renunciatory Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. Chapter Four further pursues this intersection of kingship and asceticism with an analysis of ascetic discourse in Shakespeare's Henry V. The conclusion considers areas for further analysis of asceticism in early modern literature, including revenge tragedy and Milton's Paradise Lost.

Pour Simone Weil, le malheur est « quelque chose de spécifique, irréductible à toute autre chose, comme les sons, dont rien ne peut donner aucune idée à un sourd-muet ». Il s’apparente à un sacrement, à un rite sacré susceptible de rapprocher l’homme du divin. Et si la pensée weilienne se révèle non-conformiste pour aborder la figure du malheur, c’est parce qu’elle ne se limite pas à une tradition unique, mais trouve écho tant dans la religion chrétienne et le Nouveau Testament que dans la philosophie grecque de l’antiquité – principalement le stoïcisme et le platonisme – et dans certains textes orientaux tels que la Bhagavad-Gîtâ et le Tao Te King. Par un singulier amalgame de ces influences, Weil donne naissance à une méthode spirituelle dont une des étapes fondamentales est le malheur, thème très fécond pour dénouer et affronter le dialogue entre spiritualité et contemporanéité. Parce que cette méthode ne peut pleinement être appréhendée que sur la frontière de l’athéisme et de la croyance religieuse, approfondir ses implications permet d’interroger les traces du sacré dans les civilisations occidentales. Retracer les étapes de son développement permet également de sonder le rapport qu’entretiennent les hommes avec le malheur, ainsi que de porter un regard sensible sur une époque où l’actualité fait souvent état des malheureux alors que le malheur d’autrui semble être une réalité à fuir.
For Simone Weil, a calamity is “something specific that cannot be reduced to anything else, just as sounds are inconceivable for a deaf-mute.“ It resembles a sacrament, a sacred rite bringing man closer to the divine. Weil’s thinking with regard to the notion of calamity appears nonconformist because it does not limit itself to a single tradition, but finds echoes simultaneously in the Christian religion and the New Testament, in ancient Greek philosophy - mainly Stoicism and Platonism - and in certain eastern texts such as the Bhagavad-Gita and the Tao Te King. By a strange combination of these influences, Weil gives birth to a spiritual method of which one of the fundamental stages is “calamity”, a very fertile ground for opening up and coming to terms with the dialogue between spirituality and contemporaneousness. Because this method can be completely understood only at the boundary between atheism and religious faith, examining its implications allows for questioning the traces of the sacred in Western civilizations. Retracing the stages of its development also allows for reflecting on the relationship between man and calamity or catastrophy, permitting as well a measured consideration of an epoch when current events often bring to the fore the calamitous fate of others as a reality to be avoided at all costs.

Mémoire de recherche et création, incluant une partie essai et un texte de création.
Ma recherche questionne la relation entre anorexie et écriture, omniprésente en littérature, mais dont la problématique du récit de soi reste un objet assez obscur; le potentiel de réincarnation de l’être ascétique à travers le récit de soi a faiblement été soulevé. Amélie Nothomb (Biographie de la faim) et Geneviève Brisac (Petite) se sont remémorées, par le biais de romans autofictionnels, leur passé anorexique dans une poétique elle-même ascétique. À travers l’analyse de cette performativité textuelle, ainsi que des procédés d’écritures d’autodérision et de distanciation narrative sollicités par ces auteures, mon essai propose que ces manifestations poétiques contribuent à une réincarnation indépendante du corps anorexique en œuvre littéraire, et de ce fait, poser un regard nouveau sur les souffrances antérieures. Prenant la forme d’un recueil de fragments scellé d’un pacte autofictionnel, Carnet d’une désincarnée expérimente l’écriture mémorielle de mon adolescence marquée par l’anorexie mentale. Ainsi, chacun des fragments relate, dans un « je » autodiégétique, une situation isolée d’un quotidien en lutte perpétuelle contre soi, lutte dont l’ultime et unique but est la désincarnation. Or, suite à cette désincarnation, l’objectif de mon projet était de me réincarner à travers les mots dans un carnet de chair et d’os. À cheval entre réalité et fiction, Carnet d’une désincarnée explore la possibilité de créer un texte performatif afin de projeter l’émaciation physique de l’anorexie sur l’échafaudage même du texte, qui deviendrait à part entière un corps amaigri, mais bien vivant.
My research questions the relation between anorexia and writing, omnipotent in literature, but which the question of self-writing is still really obscure; the potential of reincarnation of the ascetic individual through writing being barely tackled. Amélie Nothomb (Biographie de la faim) and Geneviève Brisac (Petite) have been both remembering themselves, through autobiographical novels, their anorexic past through an ascetic poetic in itself. Analysing this textual performativity, as well as writing process such as self-mockery and narrative detachment solicited by these authors, my essay observes that these poetical features lead altogether to an independent corporeal reincarnation of the anorexic body into literary work, and therefore, draw a new vision on the past sufferings. Taking the form of a fragmented text sealed by an autofictionnal pact, Carnet d’une désincarnée (Disembodied’s Diary) experiment the reminiscence of my adolescence marked by anorexia. In this way, each fragment recall, using the pronoun « I » as talking to myself, an isolated situation of a routine in a perpetual battle with the self, battle which the unique goal is disembodiment. Further to this disembodiment, the objective of my project was to reincarnate myself with words through the production of a diary made out of flesh and bones. In between fiction and reality, Carnet d’une désincarnée is exploring the possibility of creating a performative text that projected the emaciation of anorexia, becoming a barebonned but alive body in itself.

Intrigued by a striking resemblance between certain behaviour, characteristics and preoccupations in characters from French literary texts, on the one hand, and in modern-day anorexics on the other, we have undertaken a study of representations of abnegation. In reading female ascetic piety, particularly in an extreme and sterile form known as “scrupulosity,” as it is seen in Madame Gervaisais, by the Goncourt Brothers, and in the representation of adolescence in L’Histoire de ma vie, by George Sand, I aim to explore similarities and differences between these two “conditions.” Next, certain texts by Zola, Vincent van Gogh and Simone de Beauvoir allow me to study a wide range of responses to the same questions as those which motivate anorexia nervosa and scrupulosity: questions of balance between the spiritual and the material, of perfectionism, of excessive obedience, of refusal of pleasure, and of a capacity for self-destruction. Paradoxically, all the “characters” studied here (including those “characters” created by means of autobiography or letter writing) are represented as possessing tendencies which define these two “conditions,” tendencies which are capable of leading either to extraordinary fulfilment, an unheard of creativity, or to self-destruction motivated by a desire for perfect virtue. Reading these texts in the light of anorexia nervosa allows new insights into them, in turn offering a new perspective on anorexia nervosa, suggesting its long involvement in the cultural history of Europe.
RESUME S'anéantir ou s'épanouir : avatars d'ascétisme anorexique dans la littérature française du XIXe au XXIe siècle Intriguée par une ressemblance frappante entre quantité de comportements, caractéristiques et préoccupations chez, d'une part, des personnages des textes littéraires français du XIXe siècle, et d'autre part chez les anorexiques modernes, nous avons entrepris d'examiner des représentations de l'abnégation. En lisant la piété féminine ascétique, surtout dans une forme stérile et extrême nommée « scrupule », telle qu'elle est montrée dans Madame Gervaisais, des frères Goncourt, et dans la représentation de l'adolescence dans L'Histoire de ma vie, de George Sand, je me donne pour but l'exploration des similarités et différences entre ces deux « conditions ». Ensuite, certains textes de Zola, de Vincent van Gogh, et de Simone de Beauvoir me permettent de scruter une variété de réponses aux mêmes questions qui motivent l'anorexie mentale et le scrupule : questions d'équilibre entre le spirituel et le matériel, de perfectionnisme, d'obéissance excessive, de refus du plaisir, et de capacité à s'anéantir. Paradoxalement, tous les « personnages » étudiés ici (y compris les « personnages » créés à travers l'autobiographie ou l'art épistolaire) sont représentés comme possédant des tendances qui définissent ces deux « conditions », tendances qui peuvent mener soit à un épanouissement extraordinaire, une créativité inouïe, soit à l’anéantissement de soi motivé par un désir de vertu parfaite. Lire ces textes en rapport avec l'anorexie mentale, c'est les considérer sous un jour nouveau, ce qui offre à son tour une nouvelle optique sur l'anorexie mentale, suggérant son imbrication de longue date dans l'histoire culturelle de l'Europe.