Espace et langage : La Tour d’amour de Rachilde et la Tour de Babel

In this article I analyze the relationships between space and the main characters in La Tour d’amour, by Rachilde. More specifically I focus on how space has already stunned one of the character’s speech and communicative abilities and it is now in the process of impairing speech in the other. By analyzing the novelist’s use of myths, references to the divinity and, especially, the many instances that offer evidence of widespread corruption in the characters’ language, I show how the lighthouse in which the characters dwell can be interpreted as a decadent Tower of Babel.

Nathalie Sarraute frente al nouveau roman. Una heterodoxa genealogía de la novela moderna

El trabajo analiza las similitudes y diferencias entre las teorías de tres importantes representantes del nouveau roman francés: Nathalie Sarraute, Alain Robbe-Grillet y Jean Ricardou. Para eso, se centra en el debate que tuvo lugar en el coloquio sobre el nouveau roman llevado a cabo en Cerisy-la-Salle en 1971, del cual participaron escritores y críticos. A partir de ese balance, el trabajo se remonta a los ensayos escritos con anterioridad por Sarraute, Robbe-Grillet y Ricardou. En este contexto, se reconstruyen las ideas sobre la narrativa moderna de cada escritor y se las pone en diálogo y discusión. El trabajo se centra en la originalidad de la teoría y obra de Sarraute, expresada en una paradoja: inauguradora del movimiento, Sarraute es al mismo tiempo la eterna disidente y marginal. Este doble y contradictorio estatuto permite considerarla como la representante más original del núcleo del nouveau roman.

Les enjeux sémiotiques de la perception dans L’Étranger d’Albert Camus

Considered as a romantic incarnation of author’s ideas, L’Etranger put us in front of the absurd through the problematic character of Meursault, often studied and commented as subject of this philosophical attitude. The absurd presupposes a relationship between man and the world and is thus inevitably linked to perception: a sensory experience then founds the discourse of the novel, establishing Meursault as percipient/enunciator subject. We will use the resources offered by semiotics of discourse in its phenomenological version for analyzing the perceptual path of Meursault and especially to consider the question of Camus’s absurd under a new light

Mística y seducción : el affaire Cadière-Girard y el triunfo de la racionalidad ilustrada en Thérèse philosophe

[en] This article aims at examining the theoretic and literary models of sexuality offered in the libertine novel Thérèse philosophe, focusing on its representation of the Cadière-Girard affair. During this scandalous trial that took place in the Parliament of Aix-en-Provence in 1731, Jean-Baptiste Girard (Jesuit priest) was accused by Marie-Catherine Cadière (penitent) of sorcery and sexual abuse, while he claimed these charges were calumnies. We seek to show the development of a rationalist, demystifying, scientific perspective on this affair, characteristic of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, which tended to neutralize and obliterate charismatic religiosity. [fr] Cet article a pour but d’examiner les modèles théoriques et littéraires de la sexualité offerts par le roman libertin Thérèse philosophe, en se concentrant sur la façon dont l’affaire Cadière-Girard y est représentée. Pendant ce procès judiciaire qui a eu lieu au Parlement d’Aix-en-Provence en 1731, Jean-Baptiste Girard (père jésuite) a été accusé par Marie-Catherine Cadière (pénitente) de sorcellerie et abus, ayant reçu elle-même une dénonciation pour calomnies. On cherche à montrer le développement, autour de cette affaire, d’une perspective rationaliste, démystifiante et scientifique, propre des Lumières au XVIIIe siècle, à partir de laquelle la religiosité charismatique se neutralise au point de l’oblitération.