Alcool, drogues... et création artistique? Essai de mise en perspective à travers la figure paradigmatique de Paul Verlaine

This thesis aims to question the possibility of a dialectical relationship between the process of alcohol and the creative process for the artist. It fits into the groove of works whose answer a nagging question: does the consumption of alcohol and/or drugs encourage artistic creation or inhibits it? Two specific pathways appear to be borrowed to think about this: on the one hand, what artists say themselves; on the other hand, the study and criticism of the efflorescent corpus of the proposals made by the experts in this field. Is there a consensus on the subject? In this regard, the turbulent life of Paul Verlaine appears to constitute a paradigmatic example. The social imaginary is used to work the figuration of the poet as an alcoholic, so much that people could think that alcohol significantly affect his poetic production. Was he this kind of alcohol abuser lost in a landscape of water drinkers? Nothing is less sure. This contribution brings innovative lighting, psychologically, to the verlainian drama.