Essay as Enabler in Yves Bonnefoy: Creating the Good Reader

The essays of Yves Bonnefoy (1923-2016) form a far larger body of work than his poetry, but his undoubted stature as a poet has led scholars to see the essays almost entirely as secondary works: as offshoots of the poems, or hints for understanding them, or even just as an ars poetica. All of this is to overlook that Bonnefoy showed great dedication to the essay as a form of communication, valuing its vibrant potential to connect people and ideas in the contemporary world. As Roesler shows in this ground-breaking study, the essay, for Bonnefoy, may indeed be a bridge between philosophy and poetry, but it is also itself. Its stylistic malleability integrates an eminently modern position, and provides Bonnefoy with a platform from which, beneath his characteristic humility, he constantly guides and directs the reader.

Layla Roesler teaches at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon. Her fields include French and English literature as well as translation studies and theory.