Ruptures in Address: the Letter as Technical Device in Guilleragues, Sevigne, and Lafayette Open Access

Abstract

This dissertation examines the letter in order to explore both its effectiveness and failure as a communicative and transactional device. Focusing on Guilleragues's Lettres portugaises (1669), Madame de Sévigné's Correspondance (1725), and Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves (1678), the letter discloses a fundamental anxiety concerning the difficulty of transmitting and securing meaning as well as validating its mission as a medium for exchange. I approach the letter as an apparatus, a technical device that attempts to mediate interpersonal communication through its particular structure: a framework defined by an addressee, a message, and a signature. At issue are problems attendant to representation and communication, since silence, indifference, and ambivalence subvert the referential capacity and reciprocity proper to epistolary exchange. I argue that the stability of the framework that the letter embodies as a means of communication and exchange will be consistently tested and challenged, reflecting in turn the inability to secure representation during the Classical period. The first chapter on Lettres portugaises demonstrates that the letter does not enter into an economy of exchange for indifference and silence annul the reciprocity that the protagonist desires. Rather than instantiate the communicative act, the letter perpetuates a dynamic of non-correspondence and non-recognition, thus leading to a sense of alienation both in relation to self and other. The second chapter shows that Madame de Sévigné's address is not predicated on mutual reciprocity, but on the narcissistic return of her image as beloved. In my third chapter on La Princesse de Clèves, I argue that the lack of intersubjective recognition is not limited to epistolary correspondence, but is emblematic of the violence that governs human relations in the novel. My analysis focuses on moments of exchange during which the interlocutor is at once recognized (recipient of an address) and denied such recognition (interdiction against speech). Building on the insights of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, the dissertation illustrates that one encounters the letter as an impasse, a device that presents a maddening image of the self for it neither confirms nor denies one's position in relation to the absent other.

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1

Chapter One: On Leaving No Address: Writing and Indifference in Lettres portugaises……….......11

I. The Work of (Self)-Addressing………………………………………………………………...14

II. Forget-Me-Not….……….……………………………………………………………….......22

III. The Tragic Heroine……………….…………………………………………………………..31

IV. The Passivity of Passion……………………………………………………………………....38

V. Le Droit à l'oubli?…………………………….…………….…………………………………44

Chapter Two: The Daughter Under Erasure: Silence and Ambivalence in Sévigné's Correspondance………………………………………………………………………………….52

I. The Maternal Address……………………………………………………………..……………55

II. The Ties that Bind…………………………………………………………………..………….67

III. Abandoning the (Wounded) Mother………………………………………………..…………79

IV. Cruel Intentions……………………………………………………………………..………...89

Chapter Three: Ruptured Encounters: Problems of Address in La Princesse de Clèves….....…….102

I. Subversive Encounters: Addressing the Other……………………………………………....….104

II. Purloined Images…………………………………………………………………………..….117

III. The Unintended Recipient…………………………………………………………………....126

IV. Return to Sender: Structures of Non-Correspondence……………………………………......137

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………....149

Notes……………………………………………………………………………………………152

Works Cited……………………………………….……………………………………………180

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	French
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, Romance Literature, Classical
Keyword	Guilleragues Madame de Lafayette Economies of Exchange Letter Writing Madame de Sevigne Structures of Address
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Judovitz, Dalia, Emory University
Committee Members	Marder, Elissa, Emory University Nouvet, Claire, Emory University Hodges, Elisabeth, Miami University

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