L’imaginaire de l’exil chez Kay Boyle

Abstract

In 1923, the young poet and novelist Kay Boyle (1902-1992) took the “political” decision to leave the United States and go live in France. Nevertheless, the choice to live outside her country was by no means a rejection of the American land or of her American identity. On the contrary, expatriation provided Kay Boyle with the possibility to redefine her connection with her American origin. In the wake of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, she experimented with the image as a way of reaching for a new sense of “locality”. In the poems published in the magazine transition in the late 20s and early 30s, the image is instrumental in the exploration of a “collective memory” of the American land whose intention was to reimagine a community where the poet would find his true place and function.

Keywords

• exil
• image
• Kay Boyle
• mémoire
• modernisme
• origine