French Literature Reviews - 2026

A. Milon, Sous la langue, Artaud. La réalité en folie
Other Literary Studies

Bibliographic reference: Alain Milon, Sous la langue, Artaud. La réalité en folie, Belles Lettres, "Encre marine" series, 2016. EAN13: 9782350881003.

Artaud is not mad, or if he is, his madness resides within madness itself: "...let the asylum inmates take comfort, I am mad even for madness." To be mad even for madness in order to escape the normal/pathological dichotomy. To be mad for madness so as to stop grading it according to grids of any psychiatric nomenclature. To be mad for madness in order to overturn the very evaluation of madness, showing in fact that there is no inside or outside of reality, but that all means are valid for tunneling through this reality.

Artaud is mad even for madness because his madness deserves more than a mere label. He pushes it until it is no longer contaminated by what reason makes of it. Artaud thus belongs to those writers who have language in their sights, but unlike many others, he seeks not to tame or domesticate it, but rather to measure himself against it. In this bare-handed struggle, devoid of rhetorical artifice, lies the strength of a language beyond language, or of a work on the word that is not found in the author's polished expression, but more globally beneath language, when language becomes an autonomous body: "We must conquer French without leaving it, / for 50 years it has held me in its tongue, / yet I have another tongue under lock and key, / we must / have the current, / the un-labyrinthine, / the discursive..." To find this other tongue under lock and key in order to understand how his writing allows us to move from Artaud's language to Artaud and language—such is the project of this brief essay... small dance steps for a vast linguistic split.

Contents

Reality in Madness ........................................................................9

Artaud the "Unfixed"........................................................... 15

Artaud the Dancer: Toward a Poetic Physics .................. 29

Violence Without a Blow.......................................................... 47

Artaud, Mad Even for Madness ........................................ 55

The Plagued Body of Language.......................................... 71

The Unfigured of a Language Beyond Language................. 81

Writing Beyond Language ................................................... 91

To Be Done With It. Translation as the Dying of Language ...... 101

By the Same Author .................................................................... 109

Antonin Artaud remains one of the most radical figures of the twentieth-century French avant-garde. Associated briefly with Surrealism before forging his own path through the Theatre of Cruelty, Artaud consistently challenged the boundaries between art, physical existence, and mental alienation. Alain Milon’s essay situates Artaud’s work within this intense struggle against psychiatric categorization. By examining Artaud’s concept of being mad even for madness, Milon illuminates how the writer sought to dismantle the traditional dichotomy between the normal and the pathological, viewing his mental state not as a clinical diagnosis but as a tool for dismantling reality itself.

This study is particularly valuable for readers interested in the philosophy of language, literary theory, and the medical humanities. Milon addresses how Artaud’s writing moves beyond conventional rhetoric to treat language as an autonomous, physical body—a tongue under lock and key. By exploring themes of translation, bodily violence, and poetic physics, the book helps scholars and students understand how Artaud’s linguistic resistance serves as a form of liberation. It offers a precise, thoughtful guide for anyone seeking to navigate the complex intersection of creative expression, bodily experience, and cognitive divergence in modern literature.