Crises familiales dans Les Chants de Maldoror par Lautréamont
Family crises in Les Chants de Maldoror by Lautréamont

Summary/Abstract: The poetics of aggression displayed by Lautréamont in Les Chants de Maldoror also concerns the family nucleus; the French poet considers possible family crises starting from a member, initially regarded as „the special one” of this family, the conflict being related from this point of view to the biblical myth of Cain. Thus, Lautréamont seizes a comfortable opportunity to criticize the foundations of society, easily using parallel discourses to undermine a too strict morality. In general, Lautréamont adopts a preset pattern: the young hero is an exiled of his own family but, at the same time, a chosen one; the aggressive actions he must go through pertain to the liquid topos or to a topos of earth, close in meaning to degradation, and they are directed mainly against the body parts that reflect sexual or familial identity. At the same time, these family crises betray some sexual obsessions of the characters, who have failed to fully assume a sexual identity and, therefore, are still in search of a destiny.

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