French Literature Reviews - 2026

B. Clément, La voix verticale
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Bruno Clément, La voix verticale

Paris: Belin, coll. "L'Extrême Contemporain", 2013.
Price 22EUR
EAN 9782701164755.

Excerpt in the Literary Theory Workshop: A Figure for the Voice.

Publisher's overview:
For thought, the human voice is a resistant object: fleshly and spiritual, a medium for speech and song, adding the flavor of its intonation to the words it utters, both animal and human, the voice is natural, in short. But not only…

This essay chooses to approach this essential equivocality through a specific figure, prosopopoeia, which—by giving a voice to the absent, the dead, supernatural, or even inanimate beings—grants the texts it shapes an enduringly edifying depth. Employing prosopopoeia, philosophers and theorists (Plato, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, Levinas), poets and novelists (Beckett, Blanchot, Deguy, Sarraute) make heard, rising above ordinary and accepted discourse, a foreign and untimely voice—another voice. A truthful and demanding voice, a moral voice, at the zenith of consciousness. A vertical voice.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: A Figure for the Voice
Chapter 2: The Other Voice
Chapter 3: Feigned Voice, Serious Voice
Chapter 4: Close Voice, Distant Voice
Chapter 5: The Vertical Voice

Bruno Clément chaired the International College of Philosophy (2004–2007); he is a Professor at Paris 8 University and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His publications include: L’œuvre sans qualités – rhétorique de Samuel Beckett (Seuil, 1994), Le lecteur et son modèle (PUF, 1999), L’invention du commentaire – Augustin, Jacques Derrida (PUF, 2000), Le récit de la méthode (Seuil, 2005).

The study of the voice occupies a long-standing position in literary theory and philosophy, intersecting with rhetoric, aesthetics, and the philosophy of language. Scholars have frequently examined how texts construct a speaking subject and how rhetorical figures mediate between written marks and oral expression. Within French literary studies and the wider humanities, the investigation of voice often engages with the legacy of figures like Plato, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Freud, as well as twentieth-century narrative theory, to understand how literature stages interiority, authority, and alterity. Readers interested in the intersections of rhetoric, philosophical inquiry, and modern literature may find this study relevant.

Bruno Clément is a Professor at Paris 8 University, a member of the Institut Universitaire de France, and former chair of the International College of Philosophy. His previous publications include studies on Samuel Beckett, literary commentary, and method. This volume, published by Belin in 2013, includes five chapters exploring the concept of prosopopoeia and the voice across works by various philosophers and writers.