Alien gosd in the new epics: Noah remythologised through the ancient astronaut hypothesis in Abel's Montagut's "La gesta d'Utnoa"

Modern scientific world-view has undermined traditional myths, the functional survival of which seems to depend today in the West on a positivist justification. This would place them in the field of real History, through their study and revitalization by pseudoscientific disciplines such as the Atlantis and the ancient astronaut hypotheses. These have inspired new epic poems in (regular) verse that combine classic and/or biblical myths with a (pseudo)scientific modern world-view. For example, the critical rewriting of Noah’s myth by using the ancient astronaut hypothesis as a fictional device to produce a contemporary kind of plausibility allowed Abel Montagut to renew epic poetry, updating it also by adopting science fiction chronotopes in order to structure his fictional construction and to generate a high ethical sense for our time. Thus, his Poemo de Utnoa (1993) / La gesta d’Utnoa (1996), which has become a major classic of the literature in Esperanto thanks to its original version in this language, is a landmark of both science fiction and neo-biblical epics. This poem is written from a secular and purely literary perspective.

James Sacré, a writing of life gesture

In French contemporary poetry, some poets have wished to return to —and so to increase the value of— the enunciation of the poetic subject. In such poetic scenario, the poet James Sacré exemplifies a new approach that tries to re-establish contact with the expression of the poetic subject, albeit always avoiding the pitfalls of excessive ornamentation and poetic effusiveness. Based on the use of simple language, this approach attaches value to legibility and does not hesitate to tap into the most banal or dullest aspects of reality. This article studies one of the procedures used by the poet to reestablish the expression of the poetic subject. This procedure seeks to rewrite life gestures—a technique that evinces an unavoidable relationship between life and poetic words in the work of James Sacré.