Abstract: This in-depth and contextualised reading of Chiquenaude, the first of Raymond Roussel’s « contes holorimeurs » to be published, reveals not only the poetic principles behind this prototypical text, notably its extensive, and precocious, use of the « process », but also its reflexivity, its formative power for a neophyte reader, and its preoccupation with its own reception, as well as its principal concerns: responding to the failure of La Doublure and the question of verse as framed in 1900.
