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Paul Valéry and Paul Claudel interpreted the influence of Stéphane Mallarmé in distinct ways, constituting two principal poetic currents of early 20th-century French literature. Mallarmé developed his theory of the suggestion of poetic language as an aesthetic expression of his existential and religious crisis in the mid-1860s. This theory resonated with Valéry, for whom so-called pure poetry was a demanding artistic ideal, conceived by borrowing religious terminology but without adherence to specific religious traditions. Claudel, on the other hand, drew upon Catholicism, reflecting a distinct worldview from the other two authors. This relationship between Mallarmé, Valéry, and Claudel is situated in the context of the Third French Republic, a period of secularization that provoked diverse reactions among intellectuals. Understanding these diverse reactions can be aided by Louis Dumont's theory on the transition of European societies from communal holism to individualism, allowing us to address not only issues of poetic artistry or aesthetic vision but also metaphysical and existential concerns related to transcendence and asceticism in a secularized society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the Marcel Proust's novel A la recherche du temps perdu (published between 1913 and 1927), the discussion presented here analyze some of the relationships that were established between literature, press and editorial market in France of the Third Republic, specifically in Paris in the 1910s and 1920s. Through reality fragments of print culture, which was a striking fact of this situation, the central intention here is to understand how the emergent mediatic culture served of the spread and success of modernist literature, as in the Proustian work. Therefore, one of the central points of this reflection is to understand the role of the new cultural intermediary who then set up through the printed and bookish market, and that marked a fundamental way the history of literary modernism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]