La ballerine illettrée: transformations of the feminine in Mallarmé's sance writings

Hélène Stafford

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Published conference outputConference publication

    Abstract

    Stéphane Mallarmé's texts on dance criticism occupy a prominent place in
    dance literature. They have also been of major interest to the Mallarme
    specialists who have seen in them the key to a greater understanding of the
    whole of his work. In this article I determine how his dance writings can be
    interpreted in the context of the whole of the œuvre, including for example
    the women's magazine he wrote and produced, La Dernière Mode. I
    establish to what extent the female presence in Mallarmé's poetry tends
    towards metaphors, women's bodies absent or negated by the gaze of the
    poet. As the poet responds to the stimulus of the dance, he divests the
    female dancer of her womanly characteristics, recasting her in his own
    imagination both as feminine principle and incarnation of 'l'Idée', and also
    as mythical being, 'au-delà de toute vie possible', a composite of other
    female characters inhabiting his œuvre, constantly poised between presence
    and absence, stillness and movement, a locus for a precarious balance which
    is endlessly re-enacted in h.is own writing practice.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationSur quel pied danser? Danse et littérature
    Subtitle of host publicationActes du colloque avril 2003, Lincoln College, Oxford
    EditorsEdward Nye
    Place of PublicationAmsterdam (NL)
    PublisherRodopi
    Pages201-214
    Number of pages14
    ISBN (Electronic)978-94-012-0114-8
    ISBN (Print)90-420-16080-6, 978-90-420-1608-8
    Publication statusPublished - 5 Oct 2005

    Bibliographical note

    Actes du colloque organisé par Hélène Stafford, Michael Freeman et Edward Nye en avril 2003 à Lincoln College, Oxford

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