Nature Writing as a Frontier of Twentieth-Century Poetics: The Case of Francis Ponge and René Char

Abstract

Although it has never constituted itself as a genre within the French sphere, within the cannon of twentieth-century "Literature" are many texts that share the characteristics traditionally associated with “nature writing” (first person observational prose infused with a consciousness of natural history), including those of Francis Ponge and René Char. While ecocriticism has expanded to examine many different types of literature, these two authors represent a strain of nature writing in France, through dialogue with ancient Greek philosophy and the use of poetic techniques that create space for the autonomous existence of non-human entities, anticipate the dismantling of the human/nature divide. Their work also, just as crucially helps to break down the division between ecological writing and ecological action.