clair-obscur extreme contemporain

In Le clair-obscur extreme contemporain : Pierre Bergounioux, Pierre Michon, Patrick Modiano et Pascal Quignard Julia Holter proposes that a chiaroscuro aesthetic and mode of thought underlie and unite the work of four well-known contemporary French writers, studied together for the first time. Chiaroscuro, the bold or delicate contrast between light and shadow, is treated as a visual metaphor that evokes the tension between the senses and reason, in which the latter must take into account the former in order to temper its own totalitarian and conservative tendencies. Julia Holter's Contemporary chiaroscuro links a technique from classical art with a present-day search for a small light as a way of surviving in our violently overlit society. Dans Le clair-obscur extreme contemporain : Pierre Bergounioux, Pierre Michon, Patrick Modiano et Pascal Quignard, Julia Holter montre comment la notion de clair-obscur sous-tend la pensee et l'esthetique de quatre ecrivains francais extreme-contemporains rassembles pour la premiere fois. Aborde ici comme metaphore visuelle, le clair-obscur temoigne d'une tension entre les sens et la raison, symptomatique de notre condition contemporaine. Le clair-obscur extreme contemporain montre comment une technique de l'art classique, transposee dans le domaine de la litterature, peut s'averer feconde dans la quete actuelle d'une lumiere litteraire apte a faire contrepoids a une societe sureclairee.