Mauron, Charles (1899-1966) trained as a scientist, but deteriorating sight and the patronage of Roger Fry led to a career in translation (of contemporary English authors, including E. M. Forster) and literary criticism. Aesthetics and Psychology (1935) foreshadowed Des métaphores obsédantes au mythe personnel (1962), which purported to go beyond previous psychopathological studies of the artist (Marie Bonaparte on Poe, René Laforgue on Baudelaire), by revealing the unconscious associations underlying textual creation. Sensitively applied, his psycho-criticism yielded suggestive interpretations of Mallarmé and Racine, but his attempt to reconcile formalism and reception theory, briefly influential during the ‘nouvelle critique’ debate of the 1960s [see Criticism, 4], is currently neglected.
[William Kidd]
