"On récite déjà les vers qu’il fait encore": Delille victime du teasing?

One of the most surprising aspects of the glory that the poet Jacques Delille enjoyed during his lifetime is the fact that most of his works were famous long before they were published, thanks to the disclosure of fragments of these texts in progress, either in printed form or during Delille’s numerous public readings. This strategy testifies to the ability of the writer and his publishers to mobilize, from the late Enlightenment to the Premier Empire, a media system allowing them to raise and regulate expectations. By arguing that Delille should be perceived as a man of the written word and as an exceptional performer of his own verse, the paper also shows that after his death, the oblivion that affected this second facet of his activities played a crucial role in making his reputation inexplicable to posterity. (In French)