Powers, Letters, Norms (POLEN)

POLEN’s areas of research revolve around the issues of power and authority in their different forms (political power, religious authority, social practices, cultural, literary and artistic models, legal frameworks and judicial norms). It addresses their different modes of expression, representation and diffusion (texts, images and all forms of symbolic and artistic production). In contrast, these topics raise questions of contestation, subversion and marginality.

This general project is addressed in particular ways by the different component research groups, according to their particular focus and the research fields of their members :

CESFiMA (Centre for Research into the Late Middle Ages) : the construction of norms and models by centres of authority and learning ; the diffusion, contestation and reconstruction of knowledge, norms and models ;

CLARESS (From the Classical Age to the Restorations of the French Monarchy) : private and public practices of writing and reading ; writings of the inner self ; authority and the written word ; interaction of the public and the private in written practices ;

CEPOC (Centre for Contemporary Political Studies) : types and norms of political discourse ; social and cultural connections between literature and politics ; memory and its written expression ; non-discursive political expression (images, rituals, ceremonies).

Research topics:

Construction and contestation of models and norms. Interactions of private and public in Writing.

Connections between literature and politics or History. 

POLEN is a member of the Human Sciences Loire Valley’s Home.