Leconte de Lisle antimoderne

Abstract

Was the author of Poèmes antiques and Poèmes barbares an “antimodern”, in the sense that Antoine Compagnon gives this word in Les Antimodernes (2005)? The present study firstly puts forward the poet’s grievances against his time and the dissenting dimension of his Hellenism; then his counter-revolutionary spirit is discussed along with his lack of trust in progress, his pessimistic attitude towards human nature, his enduring belief in the original sin, and also his use of the aesthetics of the sublime and his choosing a rhetoric of violence. Lastly, it explains why several major 19th Century critics thought that nothing in Leconte de Lisle was more modern than his challenging modernity.