Thèse soutenue

Diffractions du soleil romain : le spectre de la latinité
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Auteur / Autrice : Amandine Sourisse
Direction : Christine LombezPierre Maréchaux
Type : Thèse de doctorat
Discipline(s) : Littératures comparées
Date : Soutenance en 2015
Etablissement(s) : Nantes
Ecole(s) doctorale(s) : École doctorale Sociétés, Cultures, Echanges (SCE) (Angers)
Partenaire(s) de recherche : autre partenaire : Université Nantes-Angers-Le Mans - COMUE (2009-2015)

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Résumé

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The portrayal of Roman Antiquity in narrative fiction must be understood in the framework of a collective unconscious which may suggest the existence of a "Latinity" myth. We intend to study Latinity as a historically-dated image, born from both the rise of historical sciences in the nineteenth century and the development of historical fiction. We worked to put together a corpus which brings to light the many ways in which Latinity is integrated into fiction, in order to distinguish between variations and constants in this imagined antiquity. This corpus consists of, on the one hand "The Last Days of Pompeii" by Edward Bulwer- Lytton, "Acté" by Alexandre Dumas, "Arria Marcella" by Theophile Gautier, "Der Falsche Nero" by Lion Feuchtwanger ; and on the other hand "The Last of the Valerii" by Henry James, "Gradiva" by Wilhelm Jensen, "La Bataille de Pharsale" by Claude Simon and "Albucius" by Pascal Quignard. These two categories – stories set in ancient times and stories set at the time of writing – involve identical narrative mechanisms (interactions between history and fiction, the treament of sources, the treatment of time). The analysis of this corpus ultimately points to a number of constants in the representation of Antiquity, including the archaeological motif, the writing of exoticism and alterity and the image of the Golden Age. It is the articulation of these constants around the recurring idea of Origin that allows us to demonstrate the existence of a myth of Latinity. We intend to explore how nineteenth and twentieth-century European fiction appears as a fantasy historical archive through a cross-disciplinary study of historical perspective, history of literature, and the personal literary appropriation of antiquity by writers.