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Abstract
A prominent voice of her generation, a master of poetic images and a tireless writer of prose, Andrée Chedid has been bridging the two cultures of France and the Middle East for over fifty years. Unlike other studies that have chosen to concentrate on Chedid's origins or prose, the present work focuses on Chedid's poetic corpus written over a period of fifty years. Even though she mastered all genres, poetry was her first choice, and must be considered the source of all her writing.
Our introduction examines the critical studies of Chedid's œuvre in France and the Middle East. Chapter 1 explores Chedid's life and work. In the second part of this chapter we investigate, specifically, Chedid's early career as a writer and her “art poetique.” Chapter 2 traces the evolution of Chedid's poetry from 1949 to the present, and is divided into two parts. Part I begins with the exploration of Chedid's poetic voice, the “je” narrator from her earliest texts to her most recent work, followed by a general discussion of the poems. Part II explores the genesis of Chedid's poetic text through an investigation of four versions of one poem, “L'Homme” or “VII” found in “Territoires du silence” [Territories of Silence] (PM 146). Chapter 3 examines one of the most striking and distinctive features of Chedid's poetic language: the use of typography. This typography is not just a visual structure but an integral part of her poetic structure which constructs a “visual rhythm.” In Chapter 4, we investigate two specific ways in which Chedid creates movement in her text: her use of “visual rhythm” and images of color and light. Through the metaphorical use of a phenomenon called “persistence of vision,” we examine in this chapter the paradoxical way in which the static word on a page becomes dynamic in the reader's mind. Finally, our conclusion considers certain new directions for research into Chedid's work as well as examining her place and contribution to contemporary French and Francophone literature.
