La méthode de Virgile: sciences naturelles et ordre du texte dans la poésie de Jacques Delille

Abstract

Can the confusion of Jacques Delille's scientific poems, much blamed by his con-temporaries as well as by subsequent criticism, find reasons in natural history? This is what one tries to propose, by showing that, if L'Homme des champs (1800) and Les Trois Règnes de la nature (1808) do adopt a capricious course, explicitly distinct from that of scientific treatises, this «méthode de Virgile» is in no way alien to the material or discur-sive arrangements implemented by naturalists, and, above all, it implies a thorough re-flection on the capacity of the text to mimic, with the greatest accuracy, the very forms of the world.