Andrée Chedid: multiple woman, multiple writer

Abstract

This article aims to reveal and analyze the poetics of the francophone writer Andrée Chedid focusing on the poems dedicated to the analysis of poetry and poetic creation – the metapoems. Author of poems, novels, short stories, and plays, Chedid’s work has been awarded numerous literary prizes in France. Her poetic writing is marked by two main aspects: the presence of multiculturalism and the intercultural relationship between its cultural roots and the critical tendency present in the heart of her lyrical proposal – revealed in her metapoetry. Chedid’s books present a significant number of metapoems, and her preoccupations with metapoetic and metaliterary issues are revealed in the choice of the titles of almost all her books (Textes pour un poème, Poèmes pour un texte, Par-delà les mots, Territoires du souffle, and Rythmes). Chedid is thus an example of the French tradition of literary criticism written by poets. Given this richness, and the innumerable metapoems of the author, it is possible to think of a collection of the most expressive texts that constitute Chedid’s poetic art. Poetics is here understood in the modern and contemporary sense that this term has received – as an illustrative set of the critical principles evoked by the author in writing her poems.