Lire un classique : temporalité, (dé)plaisirs et résonance de l’œuvre littéraire

A doxa of the literary institution consists in associating the reading of a classic to a timeless and universal pleasure. But this conception clashes with the real experience of reading a classic text, whose framework, most often school and university, implies a reading framed in time and in its finalities. Based on the results of a research conducted among high school students who read Madame Bovary as part of the literary section curriculum (baccalauréat littéraire), the article therefore examines the forms of pleasure and displeasure that reading a classic takes on today, in relation to the temporal framework that is specific to it.