II — Personalities and personae

Cours — Mise en scène de soi — LLCE Anglais Terminale

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Mise en scène de soi — LLCE Anglais Terminale

📘 Mise en scène de soi — II : Personnalités et personnages

Performing artists, painters, and writers use avatars or personae to magnify or hide aspects of their personalities. Singers (Kate Bush, David Bowie), poets (Shakespeare’s sonnets, Coleridge’s Kubla Khan), and painters (Rockwell’s Triple Self-Portrait, Hockney’s Pool with Two Figures) create self-representations that blur the line between fiction and reality (Paul Auster).

📐 A1 — Singers’ avatars

Kate Bush: impersonated Catherine Earnshaw from Wuthering Heights in her 1978 hit — identified with Catherine’s passionate and indomitable nature. “Kate” is short for Catherine. David Bowie (1973): created Ziggy Stardust — an imaginary twin brother that enabled him to invent a new name and story for himself, leading a double life on stage.

English	French
The limelight	Les feux de la rampe
To impersonate	Incarner/usurper l’identité de
Indomitable	Indomptable
To magnify	Agrandir

📐 A2 — Poets’ masks

Shakespeare’s Sonnet II: “When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, / And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field” — graphic evocations of old age; urges procreation so the beloved’s beauty lives on in a child. May have been a strategy to gain legitimacy as a poet without a university education.

Coleridge, “Kubla Khan” (1816): the inspired poet-genius — “Could I revive within me / Her symphony and song, / To such a deep delight ‘twould win me, / That with music loud and long, / I would build that dome in air.” The poet as a medium for a force beyond himself.

English	French
The transience	Le caractère éphémère de
To partake of	Ressortir à/s’inscrire dans
To lament	Déplorer
To woo	Courtiser
To be blessed with	Être doué de

📐 B — Self-portraits

Triple Self-Portrait, Norman Rockwell, February 13, 1960: Rockwell paints himself painting himself, with three copies of famous artists' self-portraits (Dürer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh) pinned to the upper right of the canvas. He is wearing plain clothes and smoking a pipe. The painting contains symbols of his American identity (the Star-Spangled Banner, a cowboy-style wallet). The painting both pays tribute to European masters and claims Rockwell's place in the American artistic tradition. — *Triple Self-Portrait, Norman Rockwell, 1960 — an American painter claiming his place in the great artistic tradition*

Rockwell, Triple Self-Portrait (1960): desacralizes the artist (casual clothes, pipe), self-mocking humour. Three great masters’ self-portraits (Dürer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh) in the top right corner → pays tribute, acknowledges inspirations, claims equality. Eagle + Star-Spangled Banner → he is an American artist.

Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), David Hockney, 1972: a formally dressed man stands at the edge of a swimming pool looking down at a swimmer beneath the water's surface. The painting is very impersonal — it could represent any pool, any two people. Made shortly after Hockney's break-up with Peter Schlesinger, the painting may represent the two estranged lovers who have become worlds apart (one above, one below water). The title is deliberately generic, distancing the painter from his own emotional experience. — *Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), Hockney, 1972 — emotional distance and impersonality as artistic strategy*

Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972): made after his break-up with Peter Schlesinger. Very impersonal — could represent any pool, any two people. The two men are worlds apart (one above, one below water). Art as a way to keep grief and regrets at bay.

English	French
The holy of holies	Le saint des saints
Self-mocking	Emprunt d’autodérision
The Star-Spangled Banner	Le drapeau américain
Sullen	Morose
To be construed as	Être interprété comme

📐 C — I is another: blurring fiction and reality

Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy (1987): protagonist Quinn receives a phone call for a “Paul Auster” who is not the actual Paul Auster → mirror effects between fiction and reality. “It was a wrong number that started it.” Quinn writes under the name William Wilson, echoing the Auster character who runs a detective agency. Fiction is a way of exploring realistic self-possibilities and transforming reality endlessly.

English	French
To blur	Brouiller
Entangled	Empêtré
A namesake	Un homonyme

💡 Key takeaway

Artists use avatars (Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Kate Bush as Cathy), poetic masks (Shakespeare, Coleridge), and self-portraits (Rockwell, Hockney) to explore and present different facets of themselves. Paul Auster takes this furthest by deliberately blurring the line between author and character, showing that fiction is always a form of self-exploration.

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