Itinéraires (Dec 2022)
Le festival de la Correspondance de Grignan : lire en toutes lettres
Abstract
Since the 2000’s public reading has become a very popular mode of expression in literary events everywhere in France. The town of Grignan, in French Provence, has hosted the Festival de la Correspondance since 1996. Dedicated to epistolary art, under the gaze of the tutelary figure of the place, Madame de Sévigné, who invented the genre, this annual literary event attracts a large gathering of those faithful to the art of letter writing adapted for the stage. The craze for this genre meets the growing interest of publishing houses, as well as the work of academic researchers who publish and study private writings, diaries and correspondence. Taking the example of two letters from Louise Michel to Victor Hugo, read in public during the 2016 festival, this paper shows what reading aloud mobilizes. The relationship to the materiality of the text makes it possible to consider its importance in the reading process; the relationship to writing, which is expressed both in the first person in the body of the letter and is understood as a third person in the signature, allows for a dynamics of (dis)appropriation when reading aloud, which, in the case of Louise Michel, summons an intimate experience as well as it creates a powerful political emotion. All these elements make it possible to analyze what is at stake in this act of literary and emotional sharing.
