Discours aphoristique et pensee minimaliste: Le classicisme en petits morceaux

This dissertation argues for the emergence of a "new" literary genre in the 1660's in France: a short, non-narrative prose marked by discontinuity and sententiousness, which might be termed "minimalist" literature. Generically called "fragment," the short form is examined through a close study of three writers: Pascal, La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyere. Stemming from a long-standing moral and rhetorical tradition, it marks a definite shift from morals to literature at the height of French Classicisme. The "disorderly" aspect of Pensees, the Maximes and the Caracteres is examined first in relation to the notion of "amour-propre," then as a rhetorical function within a discourse placed at the intersection of ethics and esthetics. Identifying some of its subsequent developments in later periods, this study takes up the theoretical implications of the notion of "fragment" as a genre and suggests that discontinuous writing corresponds to a certain praxis of literature wherein the modern paradoxes of presence and absence, origin and intention, alienation and self, function as complements rather than opposites.