Le Jeu et le discours féminin: la danse de l'héroïne staëlienne

Aggressive self-affirmation through play, through the amplifying yet protective screen of mimicry, is an æsthetic and ethical principle of the heroines in the novels of Madame de Staël. Repressed by society, literally veiled on the existential level, they transform the dance into a brilliant, spatial unfolding of the feminine ego. The exuberant verticality of the tarantella in Corinne, as well as the horizontal texture of the anglaise in Delphine, individualize two women of genius, and prove that body movement is a seductive medium through which the invisible existence can be interpreted. However, the relation of forces between the dancers and their male partners reveals the ironic subversion of the dream of transparence, and anticipates a resistance, if not an impossibility of exit from the feminine dilemma. Consequently, the dance in its dialectical movement, functions as a dynamic form of transcendence, and simultaneously, as a disruption of the very same process. (In French) (KMS)