This article considers contemporary analysis of women in popular music and in French chanson, focusing in particular on the celebration of female agency and identity as an Anglo-American phenomenon less typical in France. It hypothesizes that while some critical approaches function well as templates across cultures, others do not transfer as automatically, due to women's roles in shaping French popular music historically, the subversive and elastic nature of the chanson genre lyrically and formally, and the relevance of national pride to French criticism and commercialization anthropologically. Anglo-American studies are foregrounded in order to emphasize stark contrasts and possible future directions for research regarding France. The primary objectives are to note theoretical stances in the field of popular music and gender and to consider why commentary on women in French music today has its own unique criteria and biases.
This article will explore ecopoetics by comparing notes on tonic wildness: Eugène Guillevic’s poetry collection Sphère (1963), particularly the poem “Rond”, and Henry David Thoreau’s late essay “Wild Apples” (1859-1862). It will show how both writers foreground ethics and ecology via the materiality of words, the pull of nature, and the nuances of narrative voice. I will emphasize ways in which renowned French poet Guillevic exemplifies ecopoetics, despite critics not applying this label to him. I will develop parallels between Guillevic and Thoreau, consider Guillevic’s love for the non-human, and discuss the environmental and ecological stakes of his sensuous communion with the outer world. I will analyze these writers’ lively, invigorating poetic stances, highlighting the creative responses that Guillevic invites to the natural world and intersubjectivity, habitat and humanity, the senses and ecological paths that provide a future orientation. Kin perhaps to essayist Michael Pollan, Guillevic inscribes us in the cosmos and immerses us in cyclical growth, including by celebrating apples’ implicit call to inscription in the biosphere. His meditative, dialogic voice and affinities with Thoreau help ecopoetics as a category embrace immediacy and self-awareness as well as historical and literary trends since antiquity.
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