The Construction of the Lyrical Subject in Francis Ponge’s Objectual Poetry

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show how, in the case of the works of Francis Ponge, the lyrical subject of a deliberately non-subjectivist body of work can be constructed, despite – and even because of - the absence of said subject and in opposition to the object which itrecreates. Although the disappearance of the subject is a rhetorical strategy to draw attention to the object, both the linguistic features and the communicative intentionality of the texts, serveonly to define the subject in question. In the case of the works of Ponge, the lyrical subject coincides with the historical subject Francis Ponge himself. However, putting this fact aside, thispaper demonstrates that nothing in language, nor in the reality that it represents, is objective, since every object presupposes a subject.

Keywords

• Lyrical subject
• Ponge
• Derrida
• objectual poetry