Academic literature on the topic 'Rumeur – Analyse du discours narratif'

Résumé Cette étude se fait en trois moments. En premier lieu, elle montre les limites des approches béhavioristes et sociologiques abordant la rumeur sous l’angle clinique comme si elle était une pathologie dont il fallait débarrasser la société. Ensuite, elle propose une analyse centrée sur la théorie de l’énonciation à partir des hypothèses avancées par la sémiotique du discours (Bertrand), qui stipulent que toute énonciative individuelle se construit à partir de l’énonciation collective envisagée comme schéma où se trouvent déposés sous formes de sédiments certains énoncés figés comme des stéréotypes et des clichés. Enfin, il en découle une instruction que toute parole a une visée argumentative dont le procès se construit à partir des valeurs partagées entre les interlocuteurs. Car, en convoquant les clichés et les stéréotypes du thésaurus social, la narration d’une rumeur publique vise l’adhésion des interlocuteurs sur la base d’un schéma axiologique binaire marquant, de manière simple et claire, la frontière entre le bien et le mal, l’acceptable et le condamnable. L’analyse illustrera ce cadre théorique par l’étude d’une rumeur spécifique : le « complot tutsi » dans le discours sur le Rwanda avant et après le génocide de 1994.

Résumé Prenant prétexte du roman de Boubacar Boris Diop, Le Cavalier et son ombre, l’article analyse le caractère hybride de la rumeur. Se situant dans le cadre de la pragmatique, il décrit les procédés textuels – figures stylistiques, rhétoriques, narratives et discursives. La rumeur se révèle un discours répétitif, repris et transmis, maillon dans la chaîne discursive. On y retrouve le mélange fragmentaire du sujet et de l’objet, de la perspective et de la focalisation, dans un dispositif qui touche à la fois l’énonciation et la référenciation.

Résumé Partant du conflit théorique possible entre le discours de type narratif et la poétique essayistique, cet article explore les modalités de présence de la narrativité dans l’essai à partir d’un recueil récent de Pierre Nepveu, Lectures des lieux. L’ajout d’un paramètre, celui du lieu, problématise sous un autre angle la poétique essayistique chez Nepveu, conjuguant la spatialité à la temporalité du récit. Il émerge de cette analyse l’idée que le lieu apparaît comme un prisme à travers lequel l’essayiste peut lire la culture (l’essai créant un déplacement) et que l’exploration des lieux, sur le mode narratif, le conduit à envisager les objets culturels dans une continuité historique ou selon le récit de leur lecture.

Cette étude est une analyse du témoignage Génocidé de Révérien Rurangwa. Rurangwa est témoin survivant du génocide des Tutsi de 1994 au Rwanda. Son corps, marqué par la main criminelle, est complètement défiguré. Après plusieurs années, son corps porte encore les cicatrices visibles et invisibles du génocide. Génocidé est un portrait physique et psychologique du survivant Rurangwa. Cet article examine d’abord le rôle joué par la photographie dans la construction d’un récit dialogué qui crée l’écoute nécessaire pour libérer sa voix suffoquée. Ce mécanisme narratif lui permet de tenter de dire l’indicible. L’article analyse également la confiscation du corps du survivant : comment il a été ethnicisé, ciblé et ensuite marqué par le regard et le discours de l’autre qui en a fait un objet. Enfin, il montre comment l’image de la photographie de famille, plus précisément celle de la mère, joue un rôle important dans la récupération du corps par son propriétaire légitime et dans sa reconstruction identitaire.

Dans ce travail l’auteur fait une analyse sémiotique destransformations, du point de vue narratif, du concept d’amour, pedant ce siècle. Lecorpus appartient au discours cinématographique sonore, découpé par desdécades. L’interprétation de ces transformations a été faite en utilisant des apportsinterdisciplinaires provenant de la philosophie, de la psycanalyse et de lasociologie.

Lay information mediaries (LIMs) are individuals who search on behalf or because of others. LIM practices are often guided by the LIMs’ narrative regarding the individual or muse who inspired the search. How narratives influence LIMs as they provide informal caregiving to older adults and people with depression are analyzed.Les médiateurs d'information non spécialisée sont des personnes qui cherchent pour les autres ou à cause des autres. Cette pratique est souvent guidée par la vision qu'a le médiateur de la personne ou de la muse qui inspire la recherche. On analyse comment le discours narratif de ces médiateurs influe sur les soins qu'ils donnent à des adultes âgés et à des personnes souffrant de dépression.

Cette contribution se situe dans le cadre de l’analyse du discours médiatique (Charaudeau) et s’interroge sur le récit radiophonique de fait divers et d’affaires criminelles. Elle prend pour objet d’analyse l’émission quotidienne « Café Crime » présentée par Jacques Pradel et diffusée sur la station de grande écoute Europe 1 (jusqu’en juillet 2011) et plus particulièrement le récit qui inaugure chaque émission. Ainsi, cette étude analyse le fonctionnement narratif récurrent de ce récit en tenant compte de la nature du contrat de communication médiatique mais également du contexte de diffusion, des contraintes imposées par le medium et de l’hyperstructure de l’émission qui y recourt. Elle examine les modalités par le biais desquelles le récit radiophonique de fait divers répond à la double finalité qui anime le contrat médiatique et notamment les stratégies utilisées pour alimenter et stimuler l’attention de l’auditeur (captation). Après une brève présentation de l’émission en première partie, un second temps est consacré à une analyse du récit consacré à l’affaire Jacques Viguier de façon à montrer que l’auditeur n’est pas simplement invité à écouter mais qu’il devient un témoin, acteur voire co-narrateur des évènements racontés. Enfin, la troisième partie resitue le récit dans l’hyperstructure de l’émission dans la perspective de mettre en évidence les interrelations entre le récit et les contraintes pragmatiques et structurelles imposées par le support radiophonique.

In a 1999 interview with the online magazine The AV Club, a subsidiary of satirical news website, The Onion, Bret Easton Ellis claimed: “I’ve never written a single scene that I can say took place, I’ve never written a line of dialogue that I’ve heard someone say or that I have said” (qtd. in Klein). Ten years later, in the same magazine, Ellis was reminded of this quote and asked why most of his novels have been perceived as veiled autobiographies. Ellis responded:Well, they are autobiographical in the sense that they reflect who I was at a particular moment in my life. There was talk of a memoir, and I realized why I couldn’t write a memoir, because the books are the memoir—they completely sum up how I was feeling, what I was thinking about, what my obsessions were, what I was fantasizing about, who I was, in a fictional context over the last 25 years or so (qtd. in Tobias).Despite any protestations to the contrary, Bret Easton Ellis’s novels have included various intentional and unintentional disclosures which reflect the author’s personal experiences. This pattern of self-disclosure became most overt in his most recent novel, Lunar Park (2005), in which the narrator shares a name, vocation and many aspects of his personal history with Ellis himself. After two decades and many assumptions made about Ellis’s personal life in the public media, it seems on the surface as if this novel uses disclosure as the site of closure for several rumours and relationships which have haunted his career. It is possible to see how this fictional text transgresses the boundaries between fiction and fact in an attempt to sever the feedback loop between the media’s representation of Ellis and the interpretation of his fictional texts. Yet it is important to note that with Ellis, there is always more beneath the surface. This is evident after only one chapter of Lunar Park when the novel changes form from an autobiography into a fictional ghost story, both of which are told by Bret Easton Ellis, a man who simultaneously reflects and refracts aspects of the real life author.Before analysing Lunar Park, it is helpful to consider the career trajectory which led to its creation. Bret Easton Ellis made his early fame writing semi-fictional accounts of rich, beautiful, young, yet ambitionless members of generation-X, growing up in the 1980s in America. His first novel, Less Than Zero (1985), chronicled the exploits of his protagonists as they drifted from party to party, from one meaningless sexual encounter to another; all while anesthetised on a cocktail of Valium, Prozac, Percocet and various illegal drugs. The brutal realism of his narrative, coupled with the structure—short vignettes like snapshots and short chapters told in simplistic style—led the text to be hailed as the first “MTV Novel” (Annesley 90; see also: Freese).It is not difficult to discover the many similarities that exist between the creator of Less Than Zero and his fictional creation, Clay, the novel’s narrator-protagonist. Both grew up in Los Angeles and headed east to attend a small liberal-arts college. Both Ellis’s and Clay’s parents were divorced and both young men grew up living in a house with their mother and their two sisters. Ellis’s relationship with his father was, by all accounts, as strained as what is represented in the few meetings Clay has with his own father in Less Than Zero. In these scenes, Clay describes a brief, perfunctory lunch meeting in an expensive restaurant in which Clay’s father is too preoccupied by work to acknowledge his son’s presence.Ellis’s second novel, The Rules of Attraction (1987), is set at Camden College, the same college that Clay attends in Less Than Zero. At one point, Clay even guest-narrates a chapter of The Rules of Attraction; the phrase, “people are afraid to walk across campus after midnight” (205) recalls the opening line of Less Than Zero, “people are afraid to merge on highways in Los Angeles” (5). Camden bears quite a few similarities with Bennington College, the college which Ellis himself was attending when Less Than Zero was published and Ellis was catapulted into the limelight. Even Ellis himself has admitted that the book is, “a completely fictionalized portrait of a group of people, all summations of friends I knew” (qtd. in Tobias).The authenticity of Ellis’s narrative voice was considered as an insight which came from participation (A Conversation with Bret Easton Ellis). The depiction of disenfranchised youth in the Reagan era in America was so compelling because Ellis seemed to personify and even embody the malaise and listlessness of his narrators in his public performances and interviews. In the minds of many readers and critics, Ellis’s narrators were a fictional extrapolation of Ellis himself. The association of Ellis to his fictional narrators backfired when Ellis’s third novel, American Psycho (1991), was published. The novel was criticised for its detached depiction of Patrick Bateman, who narrates in minute detail his daily routine which includes an extensive beauty regime, lunchtimes and dinnertimes spent in extravagant New York restaurants, a relationship with a fiancée and a mistress, a job on Wall Street in which he seems to do no real “work,” and his night-time hobby where brutally murders women, homeless men, gay men and even a small child. Bateman’s choice of victims can be interpreted as unconsciously aimed at anyone why may threaten his dominant position as a wealthy, white, heterosexual male. While Bateman kills as many men as he does women, his male victims are killed quickly in sudden bursts of violence. Bateman’s female victims are the subject of brutal torture, prolonged violent sexualized attacks, and in many cases inhumane post-mortem disfigurement and dismemberment.The public reception of American Psycho has been analysed as much as the text itself, (see: Murphet; Brien). Because American Psycho is narrated in the first-person voice of Bateman, there is no escape from his subjectivity. Many, including the National Organization of Women, interpreted this lack of authorial comment as Ellis’s tacit agreement and acceptance of Bateman’s behaviour. Another similar interpretation was made by Roger Rosenblatt in his pre-publication review of American Psycho in which he forthrightly encourages readers to “Snuff this Book” (Rosenblatt). Rosenblatt finds no ironic critique in Ellis’s representation of Bateman, instead finding himself at a loss to understand Ellis’s intention in writing American Psycho, saying “one only assumes, Mr. Ellis disapproves. It's a bit hard to tell what Mr. Ellis intends exactly, because he languishes so comfortably in the swamp he purports to condemn” (n.p.).In much the same way as Ellis’s previous narrators had reflected his experience and opinions, Ellis was considered as accepting and even glorifying the actions of a misogynistic serial killer. Ellis himself has commented on the popularised “misreading” of his novel: “Because I never step in anywhere and say, ‘Hey, this is all wrong,’ people get upset. That’s outrageous to me! Who’s going to say that serial killing is wrong?! Isn’t that a given? There’s no need to say that” (qtd. in. Klein)Ellis himself was treated as if he had committed the actual crimes that Patrick Bateman describes. The irony being that, as I have argued elsewhere (Phillips), there are numerous signs within the text which point to the possibility that Patrick Bateman did not commit the crimes as he claims: he can be interpreted as an unreliable narrator. Although the unreliability is Bateman’s narration doesn’t remove the effect which the reader experiences, it does indicate a distance between the author and the narrator. This distance was overlooked by many critics who interpreted Ellis as agreeing and condoning Bateman’s views and actions.When Ellis’s fourth novel, Glamorama was published, the decadent lifestyle represented in the text was again considered to be a reflection of Ellis’s personal experience. The star-studded parties and glamorous night clubs seemed to be lifted straight out of Ellis’s experience (although, no-one would ever claim that Ellis was a fashion-model-turned-international-terrorist like his narrator, Victor). One reviewer notes that “even when Bret Easton Ellis writes about killer yuppies and terrorist fashion models, a lot of people still think he's writing about himself” (Waldren).With the critical tendency to read an autobiographical confession out of Ellis’s fictional works firmly in place, it is not hard to see why Ellis decided to make the narrator of his fifth novel, Lunar Park, none other than Bret Easton Ellis himself. It is my contention that Lunar Park is the site of disclosures based on the real life of Bret Easton Ellis. I believe that Ellis chose the form of a mock-autobiography-turned-ghost-story as the site of exorcism for the many ghosts which have haunted his career, namely, his public persona and the publication of American Psycho. Ultimately, it is the exorcism of a more personal ghost, namely his father Robert Martin Ellis which provides the most private disclosure in the text and therefore the most touching, truthful and abiding site of closure for the entire novel and for Ellis himself. For ease, I will refer to the narrator of Lunar Park as Bret and the author of Lunar Park as Ellis.On the surface, it appears that Lunar Park is an autobiographical memoir. In one of the many mixed reviews of the novel (see: Murray; "Behind Bret's Mask"; Hand), Steve Almond’s title describes how Ellis masquerading as Ellis “is not a pretty sight” (Almond). The opening chapter is told in autobiographical style and charts Bret’s meteoric rise from college student to member of the literary brat pack (alongside Jay McInerney and Tama Jancowitz), to reviled author of American Psycho (1991) reaching his washed-up, drug-addled and near-death nadir during the Glamorama (1998) book tour. However, careful reading of this chapter reveals that the real-life Ellis is obscuring as much about himself as he appears to be revealing. Although it takes the form of a candid disclosure of his personal life, there are elements of the narrator’s story which do not agree with the public record of the author Ellis.The fictional Bret claims to have attended Camden College, and that his manuscript for Less Than Zero was a college project, discovered by his professor. While the plot of this story does reflect Ellis’s actual experience, he has set Bret’s story at Camden College, the fictional setting of The Rules of Attraction. By adding an element of fiction into the autobiographical account, Ellis is indicating that he is not identical to his narrating counterpart. It also signifies the Bret that exists in the fictional space whereas Ellis resides in the “real world.”In Lunar Park, Bret also talks about his relationship with Jayne Dennis. Jayne is described as a model-turned-actress, an up and coming Hollywood superstar who in the 1980s performed in films alongside Keanu Reeves. Jayne is one of the truly fictional characters in Lunar Park. She doesn’t exist outside of the text, except in two websites which were established to promote the publication of Lunar Park in 2005 (www.jaynedennis.com and www.jayne-dennis.com). While Bret and Jayne are dating, Jayne falls pregnant. Bret begs her to have an abortion. When Jayne decides to keep the child, her relationship with Bret falls apart. Bret meets his son Robby only twice from birth until the age of 10. The relationship between the fictional Bret and the fictional Jayne creates Robby, a fictional offspring who shares a name with Robert Martin Ellis (Bret and Ellis’s father).Many have been tempted to participate in Ellis’s game, to sift fact from fiction in the opening chapter of Lunar Park. Holt and Abbot published a two page point-by-point analysis of where the real-life Ellis diverged from the fictional Bret. The promotional website established by Ellis’s publisher was named www.twobrets.com to invite such a comparison. Although this game is invited by Ellis, he has also publicly stated that there is more to Lunar Park than the comparison between himself and his fictional counterpart:My worry is that people will want to know what’s true and what’s not […] All the things that are in the book—my quote-unquote autobiography—I just don’t want to answer any of those questions. I don’t like demystifying the text (qtd. in Wyatt n.p.)Although Ellis refuses to demystify the text, one of the purposes of inserting himself into the text is to trap readers in this very game, and to confuse fact with fiction. Although the text opens with a chapter which reads like Ellis’s autobiography, careful reading of the textual Bret against the extra-textual Ellis reveals that this chapter contains almost as much fiction as the “ghost story” which fills the remaining 400-odd pages. This ghost story could have been told by any first-person narrator. By writing himself into the text, Ellis is writing his public persona into the fictional character of Bret. One of the effects of blurring the lines between public and private, reality and fiction is that Ellis’s real-life disclosures invite the reader to read the fictional text against their extra-textual knowledge of Ellis himself. In this way, Ellis is able to address the many ghosts which have haunted his career—most importantly the public reception of American Psycho and his public persona. A more personal ghost is the ghost of Ellis’s father who has been written into the text, literally haunting Bret’s home with messages from beyond the grave. Closure occurs when these ghosts have been exorcised. The question is: is Lunar Park Ellis’s attempt to close down the public debates, or to add more fuel to the fire?One of the areas in which Ellis seeks to find closure is in the controversy surrounding American Psycho. Ellis uses his fictional voice to re-write the discourse surrounding the creation and reception of the text. There are deliberate contradictions in Bret’s version of writing American Psycho. In Lunar Park, Bret describes the writing process of American Psycho. In an oddly ornate passage for Ellis (who seldom uses adverbs), Bret describes how he would “fearfully watch my hands as the pen swept across the yellow legal pads” (19) blaming the “spirit” of Patrick Bateman for visiting and causing the book to be written. When it was finished, the “spirit” was “disgustingly satisfied” and stopped “gleefully haunting” Bret’s dreams. This shift in writing style may be an indication of a shift from reality into a fictionalised account of the writing of American Psycho. Much of the plot of Lunar Park is taken up with the consequences of American Psycho, when a madman starts replicating crimes exactly as they appear in the novel. It is almost as if Patrick Bateman is haunting Bret and his family. When informed that his fictional violence has disrupted his quiet suburban existence, Bret laments, “this was the moment that detractors of the book had warned me about: if anything happened to anyone as a result of the publication of this novel, Bret Easton Ellis was to blame” (181-2). By the end of Lunar Park Bret decides to “kill” Patrick Bateman once and for all, by writing an epilogue in which Bateman is burnt alive.On the surface, it appears that Lunar Park is the site of an apology about American Psycho. However, this is not entirely the case. Much of Bret’s description of writing American Psycho is contradictory to Ellis’s personal accounts where he consciously researched the gruesome details of Bateman’s crimes using an FBI training manual (Rose). Although Patrick Bateman is destroyed by the end of Lunar Park, extra-textually, neither Bret nor Ellis is not entirely apologetic for his creation. Bret argues that American Psycho was “about society and manners and mores, and not about cutting up women. How could anyone who read the book not see this?” (182). Extra-textually, in an interview Ellis admitted that when he re-read “the violence sequences I was incredibly upset and shocked […] I can't believe that I wrote that. Looking back, I realize, God, you really sort of stepped over a line there” (qtd. in Wyatt n.p.). However, in that same interview, Ellis admits to lying to reporters if he feels that the reporter is “out to get” him. Therefore, Ellis’s apology may not actually be an apology at all.Lunar Park presents an explanation about how and why American Psycho was written. This explanation is much akin to claiming that “the devil made me do it”, by arguing that Bret was possessed by “the spirit of this madman” (18). While it may seem that this explanation is an attempt to close the vast amount of discussion surrounding why American Psycho was written, Ellis is actually using his fictional persona to address the public outcry about his most controversial novel, providing an apology for a text, which is really no apology at all. Ultimately, the reliability of Bret’s account depends on the reader’s knowledge of Ellis’s public persona. This interplay between the fictional Bret and the real-life Ellis can be seen in Lunar Park’s account of the Glamorama publicity tour. In Lunar Park, Bret describes his own version of the Glamorama book tour. For Bret, this tour functions as his personal nadir, the point in his life where he hits rock bottom and looks to Jayne Dennis as his saviour. Throughout the tour, Bret describes taking all manner of drugs. At one point, threatened by his erratic behaviour, Bret’s publishers asked a personal minder to join the book tour, reporting back on Bret’s actions which include picking at nonexistent scabs, sobbing at his appearance in a hotel mirror and locking himself in a bookstore bathroom for over an hour before emerging and claiming that he had a snake living in his mouth (32-33).The reality of the Glamorama book tour is not anywhere near as wild as that described by Bret in Lunar Park. In reviews and articles addressing the real-life Glamorama book tour, there are no descriptions of these events. One article, from the The Observer (Macdonald), does describe a meeting over lunch where Ellis admits to drinking way too much the night before and then having to deal with phone calls from fans he can’t remember giving his phone-number to. However, as previously mentioned, in that same article a friend of Ellis’s is quoted as saying that Ellis frequently lies to reporters. Bret’s fictional actions seem to confirm Ellis’s real life “party boy” persona. For Moran, “the name of the author [him]self can become merely an image, either used to market a literary product directly or as a kind of free floating signifier within contemporary culture” (61). Lunar Park is about all of the connotations of the name Bret Easton Ellis. It is also a subversion of those expectations. The fictional Glamorama book tour shows Ellis’s media persona taken to an extreme until it becomes a self-embodying parody. In Lunar Park, Ellis is deliberately amplifying his public persona, accepting that no amount of truthful disclosure will erase the image of Bret-the-party-boy. However, the remainder of the novel turns this image on its head by removing Bret from New York and placing him in middle-American suburbia, married, and with two children in tow.Ultimately, although the novel appears as a transgression of fact and fiction, Bret may be the most fictional of all of Ellis’s narrators (with the exception of Patrick Bateman). Bret is married where Ellis is single. Bret is heterosexual whereas Ellis is homosexual, and used the site of Lunar Park to confirm his homosexuality. Bret has children whereas Ellis is childless. Bret has settled down into the heartland of American suburbia, a wife and two children in tow whereas Ellis has made it clear that this lifestyle is not one he is seeking. The novel is presented as the site of Ellis’s personal disclosure, and yet only creates more fictional fodder for the public image of Ellis, there are elements of true and personal disclosures from Ellis life, which he is using the text as the site for his own brand of closure. The most genuine and heartfelt closure is achieved through Ellis’s disclosure of his relationship with his father.The death of Ellis’s father, Robert Martin Ellis has an impact on both the textual and extra-textual levels of Lunar Park. Textually, the novel takes the form of a ghost story, and it is Robert himself who is haunting Bret. These spectral disturbances manifest themselves in Bret’s house which slowly transforms into a representation of his childhood home. Bret also receives nightly e-mails from the bank in which his father’s ashes have been stored in a safe-deposit box. These e-mails contain an attached video file showing the last few moments of Robert Martin Ellis’s life. Bret never finds out who filmed the video. Extra-textually, the death of Robert Martin Ellis is clearly signified in the fact that Lunar Park is dedicated to him as well as Michael Wade Kaplan, two men close to Ellis who have died. The trope of fathers haunting their sons is further highlighted by Ellis’s inter-textual references to Shakespeare’s Hamlet including a quote in the epigraph: “From the table of my memory / I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, / all saws of books, all forms, all pressures past / that youth and observation copied there” (1.5.98-101). The names of various geographical locations in Bret’s neighbourhood: Bret and Jayne live on Elsinore Lane, named for Elsinore castle, Bret also visits Fortinbras Mall, Osric hotel and Ophelia Boulevard. In Hamlet, the son is called upon by the ghost of his father to avenge his death. In Lunar Park, Bret is called upon to avenge himself against the wrongs inflicted upon him by his own father.The ambiguity of the relationships between fathers and sons is summarised in the closing passage of the novel. So, if you should see my son, tell him I say hello, be good, that I am thinking of him and that I know he’s watching over me somewhere, and not to worry: that he can always find me here, whenever he wants, right here, my arms held out and waiting, in the pages, behind the covers, at the end of Lunar Park (453).Although Bret earlier signals the reader to interpret this passage as a message from Bret to his son Robby (45), it is also possible to interpret is as a message from the fictional Robert Martin Ellis to the fictional Bret. In this reading, Lunar Park is not just a novel, a game or a post-modern deconstruction of the fact and fiction binary, it instead becomes an exorcism for the author. The process of writing Lunar Park to casts the spectre of the real-life Robert Martin Ellis out of his life to a place where Bret (and Ellis) can always find him. This relationship is the site not only of disclosure – reflecting Ellis’s own personal angst with his late father – but of closure, where Ellis has channelled his relationship and indeed exorcised his father into the text.Lunar Park contains several forms of disclosures, most of which transgress the line between fiction and fact. Lunar Park does not provide a closure from the tendency to read autobiography into Ellis’s texts, instead, chapter one provides as much fiction as fact, as evident in the discussions of American Psycho and the Glamorama book tour. Although chapter one presents in an autobiographical form, the remainder of the text reveals how fictional “Bret Easton Ellis” really is. Much of Lunar Park can be interpreted as a puzzle whose answer depends on the reader’s knowledge and understanding of the public perception, persona and profile of Bret Easton Ellis himself. Although seeming to provide closure on the surface, by playing with fiction and fact, Lunar Park only opens up more ground for discussion of Ellis, his novels, his persona and his fictional worlds. These are discussions I look forward to participating in, particularly as 2010 will see the publication of Ellis’s sixth novel (and sequel to Less Than Zero), Imperial Bedrooms.Although much of Ellis’s game in Lunar Park is to tease the reader by failing to provide true disclosures or meaningful and finite closure, the ending of the Lunar Park indicates the most honest, heartfelt and abiding closure for the text and for Ellis himself. Devoid of games and extra-textual riddles, the end of the novel is a message from a father to his son. By disclosing details of his troubled relationship with his father, both Ellis and his fictional counterpart Bret are able to exorcise the ghost of Robert Martin Ellis. As the novel closes, the ghost who haunts the text has indeed been exorcised and is now standing, with “arms held out and waiting, in the pages, behind the covers, at the end of Lunar Park” (453). ReferencesAlmond, Steve. "Ellis Masquerades as Ellis, and It Is Not a Pretty Sight." Boston Globe 14 Aug. 2005.Annesley, James. Blank Fictions: Consumerism, Culture and the Contemporary American Novel. London: Pluto Press, 1998."Behind Bret's Mask." Manchester Evening News 10 Oct. 2005.Brien, Donna Lee. "The Real Filth in American Psycho: A Critical Reassessment." M/C Journal 9.5 (2006). 30 Nov. 2009 < http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/01-brien.php >.Ellis, Bret Easton. Less than Zero. London: Vintage, 1985.–––. The Rules of Attraction. London: Vintage, 1987.–––. American Psycho. London: Picador, 1991.–––. Glamorama. New York: Knopf, 1998.–––. Lunar Park. New York: Knopf, 2005.Freese, Peter. "Bret Easton Ellis, Less than Zero; Entropy in the 'Mtv Novel'?" Modes of Narrative: Approaches to American, Canadian and British Fiction. Eds. Reingard Nishik and Barbara Korts. Wurzburg: Konighausen and Naumann, 1990. 68–87. Hand, Elizabeth. "House of Horrors; Bret Easton Ellis, the Author of 'American Psycho,' Rips into His Most Frightening Subject Yet—Himself." The Washington Post 21 Aug. 2005.Klein, Joshua. "Interview with Bret Easton Ellis." The Onion AV Club 17 Mar.(1999). 5 Sep. 2009 < http://www.avclub.com/articles/bret-easton-ellis,13586/ >.Macdonald, Marianna. “Interview—Bret Easton Ellis—All Cut Up.” The Observer 28 June 1998.Moran, Joe. Star Authors. London: Pluto Press, 2000.Murphet, Julian. Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho: A Reader's Guide. New York: Continuum, 2002.Murray, Noel. "Lunar Park [Review]." The Onion AV Club 2 Aug. 2005. 1 Nov. 2009 < http://www.avclub.com/articles/lunar-park,4393/ >.Phillips, Jennifer. "Unreliable Narration in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho: Interaction between Narrative Form and Thematic Content." Current Narratives 1.1 (2009): 60–68.Rose, Charlie. “A Conversation with Bret Easton Ellis”. The Charlie Rose Show. Prod. Charlie Rose and Yvette Vega. PBS. 7 Sep. 1994. Rosenblatt, Roger. "Snuff This Book! Will Bret Easton Ellis Get Away with Murder?" The New York Times 16 Dec. 1990: Arts.Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Graham Holderness and Bryan Loughrey. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992.Tobias, Scott. "Bret Easton Ellis (Interview)". The Onion AV Club 22 Apr. 2009. 31 Aug. 2009 < http://www.avclub.com/articles/bret-easton-ellis%2C26988/1/ >.Wyatt, Edward. "Bret Easton Ellis: The Man in the Mirror." The New York Times 7 Aug. 2005: Arts.

La rumeur est un phénomène fondamental à la compréhension des mécanismes sociaux et politiques de la République du Congo. Elle a permis en grande partie l’émergence et la propagation des mouvements messianiques qui ont vu le jour sous la période coloniale, et occupe une place prépondérante dans la presse, notamment depuis l’ouverture démocratique et la Conférence Nationale souveraine qui s’est tenue en 1991. Au-delà du phénomène social, il existe une dimension discursive et narrative de la rumeur, le discours rumoral. Cet élément est essentiel pour saisir la dimension poétique de la rumeur, la production de récit qu’elle met en place et appréhender la rumeur en tant que principe d’écriture. Nombre de textes fictionnels congolais utilisent la rumeur et le discours rumoral comme ressorts narratifs et poétiques. De la présence du discours rumoral dans un récit romanesque découle la construction d’un espace, le « hors texte », dont nous avons cerné les contours progressivement, partant de son émergence spontanée dans le cadre des messianismes en passant par la presse congolaise et la « littérature des prophètes », pour parvenir au cœur de cet espace problématique manifeste dans les « romans de la rumeur »congolaise
Appreciating the extent to which rumour as a phenomenon is embedded into the political processes of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as well as being pervasive in its wider society, is key to understanding, the country. Largely responsible for the emergence of the messianic type movements which appeared in colonial times, rumour is omnipresent in the press today. This has been particularly true since the 1991 National Sovereignty Conference. Beyond its everyday place in the social order, rumour is deeply rooted into the way in which the Congolese discuss and recount their stories, by yarning. Yarning, therefore not only underpins the poetry in rumour and drives local storytelling but has become essential in creative writing. Much of Congolese fiction draws on yarning, using it as a narrative of poetic literary device, giving rise to an “off the page” dimension. From this, a picture gradually builds up; surfacing initially with the messianisms then moving into the press and the “literature of the prophets” before finishing up at what is the heart of the matter in the Congolese “Rumour Novels”

Ecrivain francais originaire de clamecy (departement de la nievre), romain rolland - 1866-1944 - connut une carriere litteraire prestigieuse grace a un important roman-cycle: jean-christophe. Publiee au cours des annees 1904-1912, l'oeuvre constitue le premier roman-fleuve de la litterature francaise. Par cet ouvrage, romain rolland entend manifester son opposition a l'usage esthetique contemporain qu'il jugeait pretentieux et maniere. Les methodes que l'auteur de jean- christophe a utilisees pour renouveler les formules romanesques, au debut du xxe siecle, marquent une nouveaute dans le roman moderne. La these propose une etude technique et comparative dans la perspective de mieux saisir les elements d'ecriture propres au style rollandien ainsi que l'ampleur de l'heritage legue aux romanciers de l'entre-deux-guerres. Quatre volets: - enquete sur les origines, la definition du terme et les caracteristiques des principaux romans-fleuves francais, - travail panoramique sur les specificites artistiques de romain rolland, en particulier son ecriture-fleuve et sa composition symphonique, - analyse structurale de jean- christophe, basee sur les aspects generaux du recit, les problemes de la narration, du temps, le systeme des personnages et l'interet de l'espace, - recherche comparative entre romain rolland et certains intellectuels humanistes des annees 1930 : roger martin du gard, jules romains et, surtout, georges duhamel dont vie et aventures de salavin pourrait sans doute etre considere comme un autre jean-christophe.

Le recueil de contes arabes d'al-ta'ir al-natiq, qui a fait l'objet de cette these, remonte au 17eme siecle. L'unique version arabe a ete trouvee a la bibliotheque de berlin. Le manuscrit, reproduit sous forme de sept fascicules a partir d'un microfilm, comporte 253 feuillets. Chaque feuillet est designe par un nombre specifique qui, ayant ete repris dans le corps du texte, lui sert de reference. Le recueil etant un manuscrit, l'ecriture n'est pas toujours intelligible et change d'un conte a l'autre. Cette variabilite prouve que plusieurs ecrivains ont participe a l'oeuvre. Le recueil comporte vingt trois contes dont certains sont complets tandis que d'autres n'ont pas ete acheves. En ce qui concerne le climat qui regne sur les differents contes, il est identique a celui que nous trouvonsdans les mille et une nuits. De fait, les deux recueils parlent de la meme epoque, evoquent la meme culture et font intervenir les memes personnages. La premiere partie de la these a ete consacree a l'edition proprement dite du texte du recueil. Nous avons du introduire des notes explicatives soit pour expliquer des mots incomprehensibles soit pour donner la reference d'une poesie ou d'un verset coranique. Aucune correction linguistique ou grammaticale n'a ete introduite afin de preserver le texte du manuscrit dans son etat originel. La deuxieme partie de la these, consacree a l'analyse du recueil, avait plusieurs objectifs : fournir les resumes des differents contes, apporter une analyse approfondie des similitudes entre les contes du recueil et d'autres contes (tels que les mille et unenuits, sindbad, etc. ) et faire une etude narratologique et critique du conte hasan le joueur de flute, dont la richesse en evenements et en personnages le designe comme modele d'etude evident. Pour conclure, le present travail est le premier consacre a l'edition critique et narratologique du recueil d'al-ta'ir al-natiq.

La qualité de la diffusion des résultats obtenus par la recherche en linguistique est tributaire de la connaissance des rouages des systèmes théoriques proposés et de la métalangue que ceux-ci utilisent. Le présent travail a pour objectif de faciliter la communication scientifique en proposant une introduction au modèle métaopérationnel, courant linguistique original qui a pris naissance en France au début des années 1970 à partir des travaux d'Henri Adamczewski. Il s'agit donc d'une étude d'ordre épistémologique présentant les conditions de développement, les principes, les méthodes et les critères de validité de ce modèle
Communicating the results obtained by researchers in linguistics depends on a knowledge of the theoretical systems thta inform these results and of the metalanguage used to convey them. The aim of this study is to improve scientific communication by providing a general introduction to the metaoperational model, to its theoretical underpinnings and technical vocabulary. The metaoperational model, which developed in France in the early 1970s, originated with the work of Henri Adamczewski, our study introduces the conditions of development, the principles, the methods and the validation procedures of this linguistic model

Dans notre approche semiotique du conte d'edgar allan poe, notre attention est focalisee sur les structures syntaxiques et la composante semantique. Au sein de la la syntaxe narrativen nous avons organise notre objet d'etude selon les quatre phases constitutives du schema narratif : manipulation, competence, performance et sanction. Pour la saisie des structures semantiques, nous avons repere et note un certain nombre de parcours figuratifs realisant quatre configurations discursives: le desir-d'etre, la conscience morale, le lien intersubjectif et la destruction. Ainsi nous avons pu evaluer le rapport que les formes discursives entretiennent avec les formes narratives. Les trois niveaux de la composante semantique : figuratif, thematique et axiologique nous ont permis de relever un certain nombre des oppositions qui parcourent notre texte et qui figurativisent la lutte et la confrontation des sujets. Nous avons pu mettre en place des oppositions comme desirable indesirable, souverainete soumission, pres loin, humain divin. . . Enfin, l'analyse de l'espace a contribue a mettre en evidence la construction des simulacres et la resolution sur un mode imaginaire du manque modal du sujet
Our semiotic approach to edgar allan poe's tale "william wilson" is centered around syntactic and semantic structures. Within narrative syntax, we organize our text according to the four parameters which constitute the narrative schema : manipulation, competence, performance and sanction. To comprehend semantic structures, we consider a certain number of figurative paths which put into practice four discursive configurations : desire, moral conscience, subjects relationship and destruction. The analysis of figurative, thematic and axiologic levels are meant to shed light on some semantic oppositions which represent the polemic relationship as well as the confrontation between actors (william wilson and his double). At last, the analysis of space lead us to tackle the main actor's imaginary resolution of his model lack : he frees himself of all constraints be they ethic or religious. Thus, semiotic analysis helps us to grasp the meaning of the chosen text

Nous proposons, d'une part, de comprendre et d'illustrer les raisons à la fois personnelles, culturelles et poétiques pour lesquelles Italo Calvino (1923-1985) a choisi en 1952, avec Le vicomte pourfendu, d'orienter durablement son écriture narrative vers un type de représentation comique, dont la nature lui est spécifique. D'autre part, en nous appuyant sur les résultats de cet examen, nous proposons une analyse détaillée des structures portantes de la représentation comique calvinienne, à savoir l'organisation de la diégèse et la construction des personnages. Défini comme fantastique, aventureux et ironique, le langage comique calvinien est présenté non seulement comme l'expression d'un optimisme foncier - résolument confiant en l'action et tourné vers l'avenir - et comme un instrument de discipline et de maîtrise du monde, mais aussi comme un élément fédérateur de l'œuvre narrative de l'auteur
On the one hand, we propose to understand and illustrate the personal, cultural and poetic reasons that led Italo Calvino (1923-1985), with The Cloven Viscount (1952), to durably direct his narrative writings towards a comic type of representation, whose nature is specific to him. On the other hand, following the results of this examination, we propose a detailed analysis of the supporting structures of Calvino's comic representation, namely the organization of the diegesis and the construction of the characters. Defined as fantastic, adventurous and ironic, Calvino's comic language is presented here not only as the expression of a fundamental optimism - resolutely trustful in the action and turned towards the future - and as an instrument of discipline and control of the world, but also as an unifying element of Calvino's narrative works

Etre auteur aux antilles ne va pas de soi. La litterature antillaise n'a pas d'institutions propres, son existence meme est deniee par des ecrivains qui se pretendent "precurseurs", masquent l'acte d'ecriture derriere la posture d'un "marqueur de paroles". Pourtant une "litterature antillaise" a pris corps depuis les annees quatrevingts. P. Chamoiseau, r. Confiant, reconnaissant e. Glissant pour pere spirituel, ont institue un champ litteraire qui a succede au mouvement de la negritude: la "creolite". L'ecrivain a desormais mission d'expliciter l'imaginaire creole. Il donne acces a une "vision interieure" perceptible dans ses romans, qui mieux que les analyses dogmatiques et le militantisme, sont capables de saisir l'existence et de la transformer. L'imaginaire creole est d'abord reappropriation d'une histoire alienee dans la "chronique coloniale". Un nouveau type de logique, de discours, de recit et de narrateur sont donc necessaires. Les histoires diverses, fragmentees seront "reliees" par un narrateur qui les recueille a travers la parole populaire. Mais le narrateur potentiel n'est pas initie; il sera parfois rejete pas la collectivite, comme un etranger. Est-il certain d'ailleurs que cette communaute existe? le "roman du nous" se heurte au morcellement du recit, de la collectivite elle-meme, menace en outre d'implosion par les contradictions internes au narrateur. En effet, comment temoigner des histoires du peuple dans un langage qui fut celui de l'assujettissement a travers l'ecrit, et le francais? ecrire est trahir. Il faut donc imaginer une poetique qui mette en relation creole et francais, oral et ecrit, dans une creation qui, comme la traduction, est faite de tensions et de renoncements. Ainsi, dans l'incertitude, au seuil "du delire verbal" et de la folie, l'ecrivain en souffrance se construit une legimite afin de prendre la suite du conteur, tout en assumant les "imperatifs de l'ecrit moderne"
Being an author in french speaking caribbean literature is not self-evident. Some authors like e. Glissant even argue that genuine literature cannot take place in a neo-colonial situation. They claim to be "marqueurs de paroles", i. E. Not so much writers as mediators of oral speech. In spite of this denial, caribbean literature has been proving its vitality since 1988, when p. Chamoiseau, r. Confiant and j. Bernabe brought forward the creole quality of caribbean culture. In contrast with "negritude" which had been looking for an authentic being in africa, creolity tries to re-establish creole culture in its own homeland, the caribbean islands, and in its own language, which is not only creole, nor any other idiom, but a shared fancy (imaginative vision of the world). Novels rather than theories, writers better than political activists can bring this identity out of racial and social diversity. In the process of creating a counter-poetics, the narrator explores history in order to break down official, colonial speech and establish a new kind of "relation" (e. Glissant). The denied history of oppressed people thus becomes a puzzling patchwork of many tales. But the would-be narrator may fail in his project to collect popular stories, which requires him to be in contact with the community. First he is felt as an outsider and furthermore the group is quite scattered. A novel written by a collective voice is bound to be an idealistic endeavour. The writer finds another stumbling block in his own contradictions, since he tries to write oral stories in a world where writing is felt as an oppressive practice, linked to a perverse law. He must create a new language in which oral speech and writing, french and creole are brought together. This heterogeneous language may accordingly lead to "opacity", but it is the hallmark of creative writing and the prerequisite for the emergence of a free subjectivity

Un des moyens d'assurer la cohérence d'un texte est de garder le même thème qui se définit comme 'ce dont on parle'. Ce thème est normalement représenté par le pronom 'il'. Par contre, les pronoms 'je', 'nous', 'tu', 'vous' et 'on' sont le plus souvent thématiquement transparents : à savoir ils peuvent coexister avec le thème (représenté par 'il', 'le' ou 'lui') dans un même énoncé sans influencer le fil thématique. Ce phénomène s'explique d'une façon adéquate par la distinction de deux types de langage : l'un est le langage de spectateurs qui décrit principalement l'évaluation des énonciateurs de ce dont ils parlent, l'autre est le langage de narration qui sert à raconter objectivement ce qui se passe. Dans la structure discursive du langage définie comme telle, la subordination complétive assure une fonction particulière. La phrase à complétive appartient, dans le grand nombre de ses occurrences, au langage de spectateurs. La principale sert à indiquer la nature de l'énonciation de la complétive, plutôt que d'être elle-même l'objet de l'énonciation. Les verbes factifs qui ont la particularité de présupposer la vérité de la complétive constituent un cas spécial de phrases à complétive. Ils assurent la fonction particulière d'imposer la revendication de la vérité de la complétive sans avoir l'air de l'asserter. Cette dissimulation de la revendication a des effets variés dans le discours selon le sémantisme et le sujet grammatical du verbe factif
One of the means of assuring the coherence of a text is to keep the same topic. The topic, defined as'a subject about which the discourse is going on', normally is represented by the pronoun 'il'. On the other hand, the pronouns 'je', 'nous', 'tu', 'vous' and 'on' are generally transparent on the topical point of view : that is to say, they can co-occur with the topic (represented by 'il', 'le' or 'lui') in the same sentence without disturbing the topical thread. This phenomenon can be adequately illustrated by the distinction of two types of language: one is the language of spectators, which describes mainly the speakers’ evaluation of what is going on, the other is the language of narration which reports objectively the events. In the frame of the discursive structure of language defined this way, thatclause construction assures a particular function : namely, that-clause sentences belong mostly to the language of spectators. The principal shows the nature of the predication of that-clause, rather than being itself the subject of the predication. The factive verbs which have the particularity of presupposing the truth of the object clause represent a special case of that-clause sentences. They have the function of imposing the claim of the truth of the object clause without asserting it. This dissimulation of the claim of the truth has various effects in the discourse, according to the meaning and the grammatical subject of the factive verb