Le Lisible et l'illisible : réflexion etmétatextualité chez Beckett, Camus etMerleau-Ponty Open Access

Abstract

What follows is a study of reading and self-reflexivity in 20^th-century French fiction, philosophy and literary theory. My concern has been to reexamine the crucial literary-theoretical concept of metatextuality by means of an interdisciplinary and comparative study of the French modernist novel in its critical relation to the philosophy of reflection from Descartes to Hegel. The dissertation argues, 1) that certain works of (meta)fiction do not answer to the classical concept and theory of metatextuality as a form of ‘reflection' in the philosophical sense, 2) that this entails a certain failure of the traditional concept of reading as such and, 3) that metatextuality and reading must therefore be (re)thought more rigorously than has been hitherto the case. My introduction carefully retraces the origins, recent evolution and mutual articulation of the concepts of metatextuality, reflection and reading. These concepts are then mobilized in detailed rereadings of two novels by Beckett and Camus as would-be examples of metatextuality or self-reflection at work. In both cases, I demonstrate that the novels in question deploy a more sophisticated logic of reflection - what I distinguish as their ‘reflexivity' - than the very theories that have traditionally been used to interpret them. Intertextually confronting Beckett's L'Innommable (1953) with the reflective cogito of Descartes' Méditations, and Camus' La Chute (1956) with the speculative dialectic of Hegel's Phenomenology, I show how these texts remain radically illegible in terms of the classical philosophical determination of the concept of reflection, and therefore of current literary-theoretical models of metatextuality issuing from it. In response to this problematic situation, my conclusion consists in a reassessment of the concept of ‘reading' or legibility and its traditional subordination to the philosophical logic of ‘experience' as everywhere and always an experience of meaning. This model of reading, I argue, is originally and fundamentally rearticulated in the later work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, offering a new, more complex way of conceptualizing the triad of reading, experience and meaning, and thus moving beyond the conceptual limits of contemporary literary theory.

Table of Contents

TABLE

I. INTRODUCTION : METATEXTUALITE ET LISIBILITE

INTRODUCTION GENERALE.................................................................................................... 2 DE LA THEORIE A LA LECTURE.............................................................................................. 5

II. LECTURES LITTERAIRES

REFLEXIVITE ET COGITO : BECKETT ET DESCARTES....................................................... 40 REFLEXION ET SPECULATION : DE DESCARTES A HEGEL.............................................. 84 REFLEXIVITE ET DIALECTIQUE : CAMUS ET HEGEL........................................................ 99

I. « Dialectique » de La Chute, I : narration et conscience de soi......................... 116

II. « Dialectique » de La Chute, II : textualite et conscience de soi....................... 143

DE LA LITTERATURE A LA THEORIE................................................................................... 178

III. CONCLUSION : LE LISIBLE ET L'ILLISIBLE

1. L'« EXPERIENCE » DE LA LECTURE..................................................................................... 191

2. EN LISANT : MERLEAU-PONTY.............................................................................................. 203

BIBLIOGRAPHIE ................................................................................................................................. 233

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	French
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	French
Research Field	Philosophy Literature, Comparative Literature, Romance
Keyword	Samuel Beckett Georg Hegel Philosophy French Literature Literary Theory Maurice Merleau-Ponty Albert Camus René Descartes
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Bennington, Geoffrey, Emory University
Committee Members	Judovitz, Dalia, Emory University Lang, Candace, Emory University Robbins, Jill, Emory University

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