Contenu du sommaire : Les enjeux de la stylistique, sous la direction de Daniel Delas

Why such an incredible amount of recent publications about style, while so few of them are actually able to project a new light on the field ? The first reason lies in the absence of a real critical sense which would lead to adopt linguistic terminologies although the epistemological background of linguistics is not really mastered. The second reason is the contempt towards literature — as a personal experience — and history — as a type of general causality — since the advent of structuralism. A third reason may be added : the constraints of the French official recruiting selection process for teachers, which assumed a continuing parallelism between the grammatical form and the superficial content of the texts. The double aim of this paper is to suggest that no new wine can be pured in such old vessels without being wasted, and to explain how stylistic readings must take in account the historicity of the text and the subjective historicity of the reader himself, far beyond the simple use of a technological and impersonal vocabulary. Here are the ethics of reading.

How criticism lacks style Benveniste is famous but misread. His style, his manner, the specific rhythm of his discourse are not perceived with all their critical dimension. For example, the philological point of view chosen by C. Dalimier to prove that « platonicien » definition of rhythm does exist before Plato, despite Benveniste, overlooks the essential of what he actually says. Stylistice has to be critical or not to be.

What is at stake in the concept of manner « Forgotten » by structuralism and the modern science of language, manner has yet been an important concept of literary individuation, like style and, later, ecriture. Linked with the notions of continuity and globality, this concept relies on semantics, rather than on semiotics, according to the distinction of Emile Benveniste. For this reason, pastiche does'nt properly repeat a specific manner, but rather can approach and caricature it. What is at stake with the concept of manner is historicisation and desacralisation of the infinite in language.

Enunciative variations : The genesis of style in « L'Etranger » As a consequence of the systematic use of the French « passe compose », the style of Albert Camus's best-known novel deviates from the traditional French novel. But it is indeed the basic function of tenses and time adverbs which is deconstructed : actions and events can no longer be located relatively to the time of utterance. The stylistic innovation of the novel cannot be separated from the enunciative choices. The article examines how Albert Camus goes from « La Mort heureuse » (a novel written in the third-person and the French « passe simple » which he never published) to a novel which is a landmark in French fiction. The stylistic choices are studied through a comparison of the opening pages of the two novels and in a fragment of « La Mort heureuse » which Camus takes up again almost literally in « L'Etranger ».

French stylistic. Two principal tendencies are opposed in France regarding the definition and delineation of the field of stylistic analysis. The first limits style to a fact of expression and strictly inscribes stylistice within a linguistics of the sign. The other does open up to an interdisciplinary and empirical approach but it often abandons the term 'style' or 'stylistice' and opts instead for concepts that it deems more precise — such as ecriture or 'rhythm' or 'maniere' (manner) on the one hand, or 'poetics' or 'textual analysis', on the other hand. One can only hope to extricate stylistice from the double aporia by taking into account everything that in discourse is a manifestation of the subject in his/her relation to the Other — especially, the dialogic and the interactional.

This article examines the distribution and organization of the possible perspectives for the science of language and discusses what status is to be given to Bally's stylistics. The aim of this project, at once theorical and didactical, is to show the epistemological difficulties that are embodied in the collective/individual and the unconscious/voluntary dualisms. From Bally's view on stylistics, we might thus be able to deal with the problems of subjectivity in the language, the specifities of different languages and the status of the subject of writing.

Relativism in contemporary american stylistics. Little by little American stylistics came apart from an universal prospect inherited from European stylistics. Leaded by relativist propositions by Stanley Fish and Barbara Herrnstein-Smith, the main debate now is that of how to make sense : as there is no objective meaning, the interpretative instance is the particular community from which, by which and for which discourse has been produced. This thesis, claiming omnipotence for the reader is vehemently contested by textual stylisticians.