ABSTRACT
Du poétique au politique:
Transfiguration esthétique et dépassement
chez Baudelaire, Prévert et Césaire
by
Aurélie Van de Wiele
This study focuses on how the works of Charles Baudelaire, Jacques Prévert and Aimé
Césaire respond to misery and existential anguish in the context of the shift to modernity,
and particularly through the changes that modernity brings to philosophical discourses on
the human and social condition. I argue that all three writers, although in different ways,
explore the qualities of a particular perception of the world as a response to human
alienation and social agony. This perception, based on “aesthetic transfiguration,” goes
beyond the appearance and usefulness of things to capture the aesthetic and metaphorical
value of the world around us. I suggest that this vision, to varying degrees and with
varying success, makes possible a certain relief from a social world of discontent for
those able to achieve it; it also represents the first step toward a more political and
collective reaction toward social and human dissatisfaction. My dissertation brings
together the works of three very different poets, unveils the evolution of the role of
literature in the past two centuries and serves, finally, to illuminate the concept of
modernity.