Stéphane Mallarmé: Mode de Création / Création de Mode

Thesis

This thesis examines the eight issues of Stéphane Mallarmé's 1874 fashion magazine, La Dernière Mode, focussing on ideas of process. On the one hand, it views La Dernière Mode as a vital phase in the evolution of Mallarmé’s aesthetic and, on the other, it sees the discourse of fashion itself as being in a continual state of trial and re-definition.

The thesis begins with a citation from Mallarmé's 1886 article, 'Mimique'; this passage showcases the complex relationship between the interpenetrating themes of Time, Drama and Fiction, which form the three main chapter headings. Taking a thematic and linguistic approach, the thesis will explore literary, theoretical and philosophical mechanisms in La Dernière Mode, assessing ways in which these can be seen to have evolved from ideas established in Mallarmé's early verse and prose writing, and tracing their evolution over the course of the poet's later works. This study will also acknowledge the importance of crisis, both personal and social, and its influence on Mallarmé’s aesthetic, showing La Dernière Mode to be part of a dynamic process by which the parameters of literature are tested and re-defined.

My study aims to contribute to the development of recent scholarship of Mallarmé, which acknowledges and celebrates his engagement with the material world and his interest in the aesthetic value of the practices of everyday life. Challenging views of Mallarmé as the 'ivory-tower poet' and destabilizing distinctions between his poetic and 'alimentary' works, this thesis thus makes a case for seeing La Dernière Mode as a testing ground for fundamental aspects of the poet's aesthetic with significant implications for the direction his æuvre would take in the 1880s and 1890s. The fashion magazine can thus, I contend, be considered as having a dynamic relationship with the poet's unattainable ideal of the 'Livre'.

Authors: Ardrey, C; Caroline Anne Ardrey

• Alternative title: Fashion, Process and La Derniere Mode
• Publication date: 2014
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Subjects: Literatures of Romance languages; French; Languages (Medieval and Modern) and non-English literature; Literature (non-English)