Presque Rien: Mallarmé's Objects

Traditional interpretations of Mallarmé's idealism tend to commit critics to a restricted definition of language as well as to a narrow vision of the Mallarmé canon. Through an analysis of the use of proper names in several "occasional" poems, as well as of the function of "vrais bois mêmes" in "L'Après-midi d'un faune," I trace the "contours" of a theory of objects in Mallarmé's poetics, and propose the model of an "impersonal ostension of self" as a counterbalance to its "elocutionary disappearance." (JSH)