La figuration du corps dans les romans de William Faulkner (1929-1948)

• Auteur / Autrice : Florence Césari-Stricker
• Direction : Hubert Teyssandier
• Type : Thèse de doctorat
• Discipline(s) : Études anglophones
• Date : Soutenance en 1994
• Etablissement(s) : Paris 3

Mots clés

Mots clés contrôlés

Critique et interprétation

Faulkner, William (1897-1962)

Dans la littérature

Corps humain

Résumé

Tire vers le chaos des origines, le corps faulknerien s'enlise dans l'indifferencie et toute figuration semble impossible car ce corps est sans contour. Bien sur on peut parfois tracer un cadre mais le contenu demeure intangible, fantomatique. Ce corps-fantome constitue cependant une surface blanche qui sert d'ecran a des projections imaginaires. Il demeure neanmoins difficile a circonscrire de facon fiable, car il est atopique, inassigniable a residence, ou bien evacue. Radicalement ou partiellement. C'est alors un corps humoral, digestif, sexuel, dont le texte s'attache a conjurer les vides par l'intermediaire de deperditions liquides permutables ou reversibles. Le corps faulknerien n'en est pas moins en perpetuelle instance de morcellement. Mais ce morcellement peut avoir une fonction constitutive, tout comme la metonymie, qui represente, avec la negation, la comparaison et la metaphore, une facon oblique de saisir le corps. Espace d'effractions et de detournements, le corps faulknerien est aussi le support d'impressions diverses et la source d'une parole perturbante, qui l'emporte et le traverse. C'est enfin un corps en mouvement, un corps ouvert, a plusieurs logiques et a entrees multiples, dont les elements entretiennent des relations instables.

As it is drawn back to original chaos, the faulknerian body is plagued by shapelessness and all attempt at outlining its figure seems to be doomed. Of course one may sometimes etch out a frame yet what is contained within remains intangible. Such a gostly body nevertheless amounts to a blank sheet, a surface which in turn serves as a screen on which imaginary projections can take shape. However, the faulknerian body remains elusive, difficult to circumscribe for it is without any topos of even made into a partial or total void. Then it is characterized only by bodily humours or digestive and sexual functions. But it is informed by a discourse which strives to make up for its blanck thanks to interchangeable or reversible losses. Yet the faulknerian body ever remains on the verge of sundering paradoxically enough, such sundering may prove constructive, just like metonymies, which appear, together with negations, comparisons and metaphors as so many possible oblique ways of apprehending the body. Characterized by intrusions and detour, the faulklnerian body is also a base for various impressions and a source of disturbing speech which carries it even as it pierces it through and through. Last of all, the faulknerian body is perpetually in motion, it is an open entity which has several types of logic and the components of which entertain instable relations.