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Teaching literature today : an art of seeing, an art of

reading, an art of writing.


From the photograph books between Michel Butor and his artists.

My project resulted from one passion: photography, but also from a


personal meeting with an author, Michel Butor (1926-2016), and from
the discovery of his pictures taken in the 1950s most of them
previously unseen starting from their role, which I think is essential in
his works. Above all, it was created in parallel with my new and
fascinating profession: as a teacher in high school, I experimented the
hard transmission of literature through the essential and pedagogical
function of images1.

When someone asked Michel Butor why he stopped photography


after ten years of practice as an amateur Butor himself didnt really
know how to answer. He only admitted that he had no more time to practice it and he preferred to
focus on writing on, around photographic images realized by others. That discreet renouncement
reveals his desire to look at how others look2, to observe the image in process. In fact, the
compagnonnage with the artists got bigger and bigger, and placing himself in the middle of the
photographers, Michel Butor then noticed that their vision considerably helped his3.

I would like to show how the pictures had been an exercise that allowed the writer to learn how
to look, and then to perceive the world he wandered during his travels. It is thanks to this cole du
regard that he made such a particular work about 2 000 productions! Writing with the artists, Butor
created new writing forms, playing with all the possible combinations inside the book which shares
its pages between texts and images. A real poetic of graphical space emerges, and this enables us
to reevaluate the permanent antagonism between poetic, spatial or physical representations and to
deal with pedagogical concerns: produced by a teacher who was very much aware of the
transmission to his students, the work of Butor enables us to reconsider the actual position of
literature inside a world full of images.
How can we teach the desire to read texts patiently, especially to a new generation of young
people swamped with images? In what ways can we still promote the importance of literature in their
lives if we continue to separate the text from this reality?

In that perspective, the collaborative work made by Michel Butor with artists coming from all
horizons is paradigmatic of what kind of activities the contemporary teacher has to think about, in
order to open the frontiers of the literary text with other media. The image not only enables us to
reconsider the epistemological basis of reading, but it also reminds us of the nature of individual

1
I wrote an essay entitled Texte et image l'atelier : pour une lecture actualisante de la littrature. , may
2016, 68 p. It resulted from a year of teaching and training in the Ecole Suprieure du Professorat de
lEducation (ESPE) of Paris. Content : pedagogical experiences based on the didactical and use of literary
text and images.
2
regarder le regarder M. Butor, Les relations de la voyante in uvres compltes, vol. X, Paris, La
Diffrence, 2009, p.1151.
3
Michel Butor, Souvenirs photographiques , uvres compltes X, op.cit., p.1117.
interpretation. The teacher who focuses on the components of his course realizes how questioning
the pedagogy he used in teaching has become absolutely necessary. The one who tries to develop
the interest shown by the young readers in their proper representations or expectations and so the
one who gives some space for the expression of their visual imagination is going to invite them to
move into the text, starting from what they experience from it.

This alternative device enables us to come closer to literature in another way and to appease
numerous distrustful reactions commonly shared by the learners regarding the literary text. Indeed it
appears less and less familiar to them, contrary to images as digital natives. Considering it not only
allows us to take into account what emerges from the personal, affective and trustful reading of the
learners, but also it means that we consider the text as a territory full of images waiting to be
discovered.

Adle Godefroy

17, quai de bourbon - 75004 PARIS


adele.godefroy@hotmail.fr
http://www.adelegodefroy.com
http://polalegria.tumblr.com/

BIOGRAPHY

After two years of studying modern literature, philosophy and theatre in Caen, Normandy, Adele
Godefroy specialised in general and comparative literature, and aesthetics at the University Sorbonne-
Nouvelle (Paris 3), where she did her master's studies. Simultaneously, she started building her approach to
pedagogy, by being part of the organisation of holidays for young people (ages four to seventeen), and by
joining associations like the CEMEA, which specialises in popular education, or associations specialising in
innovative pedagogies (Agilabil, projet IDEX, USPC). Her thoughts about those topics progressed with
observations done in French educative structures, such as the Lyce Autogr de Paris (Self-Managed High
School), the Collge Lyce Exprimental d'Hrouville (Experimental Middle and High School), the Printemps
de lducation (Spring for Education), and the 'democratic schools' that are now flourishing in Paris. Her
thoughts progressed abroad as well, when she launched the artistic and pedagogical project Polalegria, in
Latin America, and when she studied in Sweden for a semester, at Lund university. Taking pictures is an
ongoing process that has accompanied her in her travels, but also in her reflection as a teacher, and as a
theoretician.

Adle passed the CAPES in 2015, and is now a recognised teacher in France. She taught literature
to middle school students before obtaining a reasearch grant last June, from the Doctoral School 120
General and Comparative Literature. Now a researcher of the University Sorbonne-Nouvelle, she has different
ongoing projects with young people, and gives talks about her research the links between text, image and
pedagogy.

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