Quand le diable écrit et publie. Le littéraire comme pratique sociale dans la correspondance de Surin et La Possession de Loudun

Abstract

When the devil writes and publishes. Literary practices as social practices in the Correspondence of Surin and the Possession of Lundun. This article analyses how Michel de Certeau uses literature as a social phenomenon on the one hand, and studies on literature on the other hand, to make room for the otherness of the past and to tackle this past without confining it in any historiography. First of all, we analyse how Certeau mobilizes the notion of "literary genre", that is to say how he uses an important tool of literary studies, though diverting it completely (in his edition of the Correspondence of Jean-Joseph Surin, a mystique, as well as in L'Ecriture de l' histoire). In this paper, we also enquire into the place of the literary phenomenon in Certeau's analysis of Loudun's possession. At the end of our study, it becomes possible to designate what would constitute for Certeau the main characteristic ‒ or one characteristic ‒ of literary practices.