Écrire le ravissement : élaboration du personnage dans Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein et Le Vice-consul de Marguerite Duras Open Access

Upadhyay, Lauren Eileen (2015)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/k930bx918?locale=en
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Abstract

Through an analysis of the preparatory manuscripts and drafts of these novels, this dissertation investigates character development in Marguerite Duras's works and its relation to the author's engagement with the act of writing, and shows how Marguerite Duras stages the writing process through the laconic characters that populate her novels. The first chapter refers to an interview in which Marguerite Duras designates the main character in Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein as a "depersonne." The author problematizes the very notion of what constitutes a literary character by implying that the character is not to be considered as the simulacra of a person, but as the very undoing of the concept of personhood. The question of identity frames the second chapter, which presents a study of the delimitation of self in Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein. The characters' parasitical identities create a multiplicity of selves, reflecting the borderless nature of writing which, according to Duras, is "a fluid world." The third chapter focuses on the characters' materiality in Le Vice-consul, which presents a number of mises en abyme of the writer. The characters are described as disfigured by the love that they cannot attain. This search for love parallels the experience of the writer before the literary work, which Duras describes as a "love without subjects." We study the characters' voices in the fourth chapter through a comparison of expression in these novels. Fragmentary discourse in Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein reflects Marguerite Duras's writing process, as Lol's mutilated sentences attest to the violence that the text endures. By contrast, in Le Vice-consul the main character screams, and this anguish parallels the urgency of the writer's search for the appropriate words. This dissertation argues that the Durassian characters can be seen as allegories of the text in creation, soliciting their coming into being without attaining completion. Like the characters, the text is caught between elaboration and annihilation, dispossessed rather than developed by the writing process. The Durassian text, like its characters, casts doubt on its own identity as a text, perpetually remaining instead in the state of writing.

Table of Contents

DEDICACE

REMERCIEMENTS

CHAPITRES

INTRODUCTION : LE PERSONNAGE, ALLEGORIE DE L'ECRITURE 1

L'approche genetique : praxis 13

Corpus de l'oeuvre inedite 14

Dynamiques de l'ecriture 18

1 DE L'INACHEVE VERS L'ABSENT : LA CESURE DE L'ETRE 20

Sur les ruines de Lol V. Stein 22

Lol "vue dans les autres" 35

Le depeuplement de la depersonne 44

Une esthetique de la soustraction 48

2 SUJET PARASITE, VOIX PLURIELLES 54

Le nom qui ne nomme pas 55

A l'origine de "la" 64

Retition, substitution, compulsion : l'identite s'effondre 79

(De)personn(ag)es 89

3 L'ENTRE-DEUX DE L'ECRITURE 99

Le visage insupportable 105

L'ecriture en parallele 119

La phrase qui ne marche plus 140

4 FAIRE PARLER LE SILENCE : LE MOT MANQUANT 148

Lol et le discours fragmentaire 151

Le Vice-consul et la quete du mot juste 171

"Tout crie doucement, mais loin" 186

CONCLUSION : AU RAS DU TEXTE 196

BIBLIOGRAPHIE 206

APPENDICES

A. Brouillon du Ravissement de Lol V. Stein 214

IMEC/Fonds Marguerite Duras, DRS 28.10, folio 3 ter

B. Brouillon du Vice-consul 216

IMEC/Fonds Marguerite Duras, DRS 33.5, folio 93

TABLES ET FIGURES

Tatiana se substitue a Lol 66

Confusion du sujet Lol/Tatiana 68

Pluralisme du sujet 88

Suicide de Michael Richardson 93

Genese du depeuplement 96

Genese du "descripteur bavard" 109

Tissage des recits du vice-consul et de la mendiante 122

L'effort de l'ecrivain 133

Discours fragmentaire I 162

Discours fragmentaire II 163

Discours fragmentaire III 165

Discours fragmentaire IV 165

Discours fragmentaire V 167

Discours fragmentaire VI 168

Genese du cri 178

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