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Agnes DERAIL-IMBERT Eros et Ares: les enfants de la guerre dans Billy Budd, Sailor de Melville Cette etude se propose de lire Billy Budd, Sailor comme une fable juridique qui dramatise, dans un double contexte de guerre et de mutinerie, le conflit entre la violence d'une innocence exceptionnelle (Billy) et celle du mal absolu (Claggart). L'une et l'autre, hors la loi, recele une menace insurrectionnelle que la souverainete politique (celle du capitaine Vere), pour se maintenir, doit reprimer. Le jugement de Vere - l'execution de Budd -, s'exercant au nom de la violence legale, met en oeuvre une strategie qui enrole la puissance cohesive d'Eros au service de la loi mar- tiale, dans une operation qui vise a naturaliser et a sublimer la violence arbitraire de l'etat d'exception. Against a backdrop of war and mutiny, Billy Budd, Sailor can be read as a juridical drama staging the conflict between the exceptional violence of utmost innocence (Billy's) and that of absolute evil (Claggart's). Both infringe the law and both are pregnant with a threat of insurrection which political sovereignty (captain Vere's) must eradicate for the sake of its own integrity. Vere's sentence condemning Budd to death in the name of legal violence partakes of a complex strategy whose aim is to summon Eros's cohesive power in order to buttress martial law and to naturalize and sublimate the arbitrary violence of the state of exception. Michael GILLESPIE The Picture of Dorian Gray as a Postmodern Work Despite the wide range of interpretative approaches to The Picture of Dorian Gray that have appeared since its publication, all seem to assume that a particular set of values or beliefs-traditional Judeo-Christian morality, cultural attitudes, nationa- list dispositions, or queer inclinations-is integral to Wilde's narrative. This essay challenges the value of any metaphysical reading by asserting that the world of The Picture of Dor