renouveau et crise du geste hagiographique”, under the supervision of Sophie Houdard. In 2013, she gave French language classes at the University of Oxford.

This study deals with a paradox: we would like to talk about the weakness of a saint imaginary universe in the middle of the French seventeenth-century « culture de l’intériorité » (Mino Bergamo). Jeanne de Chantal (1572-1641), one of the most famous nuns of the Counter-Reformation, spiritually guided by François de Sales and canonised in 1767, wrote more than two thousand letters. These letters tell the spiritual experience hardly using images, or choosing topical images from the mystical Tradition. This phenomenon could be read as the symptom of a painful and worrisome lack: the Absence of God during the spiritual experience. How can the most singular can be conveyed with other people’s words? Would it be a way to confess the failure of the mystic experience? This lacking language is a troubling sign of an unacceptable Absence. Thus, as a way to fill the emptiness, Jeanne de Chantal seems to rely on the materiality of three religious realities: the use of the Christian word, the marked body, and the prayer.

Benedetta Papasogli, « Marie de l’Incarnation : le glaive et le feu »

Benedetta Papasogli est professeur de littérature française à la LUMSA (Libera Università Maria Ss. Assunta) de Rome. Spécialiste des moralistes classiques et de la littérature spirituelle, elle a publié, entre autres, Le « Fond du cœur ». Figures de l’espace intérieur au xviie siècle (Paris, 2000) et La Mémoire du cœur au xviie siècle (Paris, 2008) et une traduction italienne des Pensées de Pascal (Rome, 2003).

Benedetta Papasogli is a professor of French literature at the LUMSA (Libera Università Maria Ss. Assunta) in Rome. A specialist in classical moralists and spiritual literature, she has published, amongst other works, Le « Fond du cœur ». Figures de l’espace intérieur au xviie siècle (Paris, 2000) and La Mémoire du cœur au xviie siècle (Paris, 2008), as well as an Italian translation of Pascal’s Pensées (Rome, 2003).

The dialectics of “far-near” are a privileged key to the investigation of the imagery of Marie de l’Incarnation, the Theresa of the New World. In her experience the figure of separation appears primeval; however the symbols of the cyclical regime (to use Gilbert Durand’s categories), in particular fire, and the story of amorous reciprocity, prepare the way to understanding the ultimate truth of her experience as a woman, which aims at a state of communion prefigured in the lightness of a “breath”, in the sweetness of the “air”. A spiritual path here is repeated through the regimes of imagery.

Flavia Mariotti, « Voile et secret dans les écrits de la Mère Agnès Arnauld »

Flavia Mariotti est professeur de littérature française à l’Università La Sapienza de Rome. Ses recherches portent sur le roman du xxe siècle auquel elle a consacré plusieurs essais, ainsi que sur la littérature du xviie siècle, aussi bien le roman que le théâtre. Elle s’est aussi occupée de la théorie et de la pratique de la traduction à Port-Royal, en contribuant à la publication de textes et de documents inédits.

Flavia Mariotti is a professor of French literature at the Università La Sapienza in Rome. Her research focuses on the twentieth-century novel, to which she has devoted several essays, as well as seventeenth-century literature, both the novel and theatre. She has also worked on the theory and practice of translating at Port-Royal, contributing to the publication of previously unseen texts and documents.

By analysing the writings of Mother Agnès Arnauld, this paper explores the nuanced symbolism of the veil at Port-Royal, and the type of imagery it inspires. From her Chapelet secret to her later writings, the contradictory values that the veil symbolises – separation and union, concealment and revelation – take on different connotations in relation to the abbess’ spiritual development. The veil’s imagery acquires richness and complexity when compounded by the image of the bottom of the heart as the secret site of inner life, thus conveying both the abbess’s spiritual and psychological attitudes.

Franca Franchi, « Mystique du Néant »

Franca Franchi est professeur de littérature française à l’Università degli Studi di Bergamo. Ses recherches privilégient les structures et les thématiques de l’imaginaire dans la littérature et les arts visuels. Elle a notamment publié Promenade au pays des émotions (Paris, 2008) et L’immaginario androgino (Bergame, 2012). Elle s’intéresse actuellement au mysticisme et au gnosticisme dans le domaine surréaliste.

Franca Franchi is a professor of French literature at the Università degli Studi di Bergamo. Her research privileges the structures and thematics of the imaginary in literature and the visual arts. She has published Promenade au pays des émotions (Paris, 2008) and L’immaginario androgino (Bergamo, 2012). She is currently interested in mysticism and Gnosticism in the surrealist field.

The singularity of the case of Louise du Néant has led it to be considered pathological from the beginning. Consequently, her mystic writings – which were deemed irregular, heterodox and nonconformist – have been increasingly marginalised. Conversely, this essay intends to draw attention to the fact that the letters of Louise du Néant belong, to all intents and purposes, to the mystic tradition, from which she draws both content and language. On the one hand, this essay proposes that her intense self-humiliation,

ad infinitum, bespeaks both her inadequacy with regard to her object of desire (Jesus Christ), and the attendant anxiety. On the other, it intends to show that it is precisely in this mystic culture (from which Georges Bataille would go on to draw his lexicon) that the concept of the “formless” has its roots as “depreciation of being” (Inner Experience).

Barbara Piqué, « La négation : un imaginaire structurel dans l’œuvre de Madame Guyon »

Barbara Piqué enseigne la littérature française à l’Università della Tuscia de Viterbe. Ses recherches portent essentiellement sur le xviie siècle (Madeleine de Scudéry moraliste, le thème de la retraite). Elle a publié notamment Éthique chrétienne et esthétique galante (Paris, 2006). Elle a également traduit et édité en italien des textes rares de Dassoucy ou de Béroalde de Verville.

Barbara Piqué teaches French literature at the Università della Tuscia in Viterbo. Her research focuses on the seventeenth century (Madeleine de Scudéry as moralist, the theme of retreat). She has published Éthique chrétienne et esthétique galante (Paris, 2006). She has also translated into Italian and edited rare texts by Dassoucy and Béroalde de Verville.

When reading the works by Madame Guyon – from her autobiographical texts to the Moyen Court and the Torrents – it is essential to note the eminent position of the negative form in all its possible variations: plain, full, restrictive etc. This essay aims to propose an interpretation of some works by Madame Guyon in the light of such a constant peculiarity, which is the basic structure of the unconsciousness set to translate the ineffable in the mystical writing.