Numéro thématique
- ANTIER Guilhen, ROHMER Céline, SINGER Christophe - Avant-propos
- ANTIER Guilhen - Bible, littérature, psychanalyse : une articulation improbable ?
- ROHMER Céline - « Que le lecteur comprenne ! » (Mt 24,15). Remarques sur l’accomplissement matthéen de la lecture
- SINGER Christophe - Lire la Bible en relief
- ASSAËL Jacqueline - Quelques éléments d’herméneutique littéraire des textes bibliques
- CUVILLIER Élian - Écouter l’inconscient du texte ?
Bible, literature, psychoanalysis: an unlikely connection?
What to think about the links between the terms “Bible”, “literature” and “psychoanalysis”, the title of the research seminar at the Institut protestant de théologie in Montpellier, which led to the publication of this thematic dossier? After outlining a few aspects of the history since Freud of the dialogue between religion, psychoanalysis and literature, this article reviews some of the possible ways in which the three terms can be linked. This varies depending on whether they are given the status of discipline, corpus or method. The study attempts to highlight some of the issues at stake, between promises and risks, and argues for a meeting of the discourses around a point of negativity, in other words a fault line.
Keywords: Bible, literature, psychoanalysis, interdisciplinarity, unconscious, religion
“Let the reader understand” (Mt 24:15). Remarks on the Matthaean fulfilment of the reading
In the mid-twentieth century, literary theorists sought to account for literary works from the point of view of their reception, emphasizing the relationship between text and reality. The time of the reader had come. But literature has never ignored its recipients. Novelists, poets and playwrights think about the close relationship that their words and images have with their readers, listeners or spectators. The authors of the New Testament, too, reflect on this necessary collaboration, and their texts bear witness to it. This article proposes using literature to enter into a discussion with the evangelist Matthew and what he reveals about his understanding of the act of reading in five specific places in his account (chapters 12; 2; 6; 23; 5).
Keywords: Reading, Gospel of Matthew, achievement, literature, Hamlet, Yves Bonnefoy, Olivier Py, reception theory, poetry, theatre
The seminar Bible, littérature, psychanalyse at the Institut protestant de théologie in Montpellier studies biblical and other texts, while at the same time reflecting on the act of reading itself. This article proposes to understand this act as a search for truth. The psychoanalytically oriented act of reading gives this search for truth the form of a plunge into the fabric, the weave of both the text and the reader’s existence, not without analogy with relief vision. A few examples, taken mainly from the Lucan corpus, accompany the discussion.
Keywords: Bible, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, story, Luke, 3D
Echoing the articles by Guilhen Antier, Céline Rohmer and Christophe Singer in the thematic issue “Bible, literature, psychoanalysis”, this article offers some elements of theoretical and practical reflection for literary hermeneutics of the biblical corpus. The choice of interdisciplinarity with psychoanalysis seems to present the risk of obscuring the proper object of theology (the pneuma) in common thought, even if this parallel science allows the authors, in this volume, to remarkably refine their analysis tools. In her academic career, other types of association with researchers in human sciences allowed the author to successfully develop her work on New Testament exegesis. Reading the contributions referring to the methods of literary studies confirms her idea of the fundamental interest in examining biblical texts from a generic point of view. Comparing their functioning with a narrative, poetic or theatrical repertoire constitutes, in this case, a means of revealing the specific characteristics and virtues of the statements of the kerygma, which are works of spirituality.
Keywords: Biblical hermeneutics, spirituality, psychoanalysis, human sciences, inspiration, theatre, poetry, epistemology
This article offers five additional comments for the “Bible, literature and psychoanalysis” dossier: The Bible, literature and psychoanalysis have in common an infinite potential for meaning; the Bible is first and foremost symbolic and literature an infinite imaginary, while the psychoanalytical approach questions both; psychoanalysing a text involves listening to its unconscious; psychoanalytical listening to the biblical text is not a matter of scientific knowledge but of subjective truth; the poetic dimension of literature, including the biblical one, is fundamental.
Keywords: Bible, literature, psychoanalysis, theology, exegesis, interpretation