La Fontaine au cœur du débat entre tradition et modernité dans Amants, heureux amants… de Valery Larbaud

Abstract

Our paper aims at showing the place ofprime importance and La Fontaine’s reachin the debate on classicism and modernityin the trilogy Amants, heureux amants…Since it’s not by chance, as we go through,that our writer takes a hemistich of the firstverse from «Les deux pigeons» (title alsogiven to the second novel AMANTS,HEUREUX AMANTS) to crown the workwhich lead him to deserve the consecrationas an author of the literary vanguardgrouped in the Rive Gauche in the twenties.If the metaliterary discourse is a steadyfeature in larbaldian works, in this case itgets features which need further considerationsince it allows to define a mature conceptof larbaldian modernity, a temperedand balanced modernity, a notion of modernitywhich doesn’t exclude the tradition.

Keywords

• La Fontaine
• discussion
• classicisme
• modernity
• XXth century
• Larbaud