<p>The present BA thesis is an analysis and a close reading of the French author Gabrielle Wittkop's novel Le Nécrophile (1972). The analysis consists of two parts. The first part focuses on the story and can be described as an attempt to interpret the engine of the history. The second part of the analysis focuses on the narrative; how the story is told. Le Nécrophiles main motif is re-encoding the representation of death in art and literature, traditionally conceived as a beautiful female corpse. The narrative embodies death as different of body types – men, women, old people, childen - and hence avoids to produce death as the female Other. By the use of different methods, such as metaphores, focalizing etc., the corpse becomes something more than a passive object, now threatening and interacting. In the novel necrophilia is described as a higher form of love. The historical view of sexuality as divided into high/low is strongly codified from a gender perspective; the higher form of love is associated with masculinity and the lower form with femininity. In Le Nécrophile the classification of high/low is based on life and death instead of masculinity and femininity; a new way of staging the binery pairs high/low.</p>

The present BA thesis is an analysis and a close reading of the French author Gabrielle Wittkop's novel Le Nécrophile (1972). The analysis consists of two parts. The first part focuses on the story and can be described as an attempt to interpret the engine of the history. The second part of the analysis focuses on the narrative; how the story is told. Le Nécrophiles main motif is re-encoding the representation of death in art and literature, traditionally conceived as a beautiful female corpse. The narrative embodies death as different of body types – men, women, old people, childen - and hence avoids to produce death as the female Other. By the use of different methods, such as metaphores, focalizing etc., the corpse becomes something more than a passive object, now threatening and interacting. In the novel necrophilia is described as a higher form of love. The historical view of sexuality as divided into high/low is strongly codified from a gender perspective; the higher form of love is associated with masculinity and the lower form with femininity. In Le Nécrophile the classification of high/low is based on life and death instead of masculinity and femininity; a new way of staging the binery pairs high/low.

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Letras, Departamento de Teoria Literária e Literatura, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Literatura, 2016. / Submitted by Fernanda Percia França (fernandafranca@bce.unb.br) on 2016-08-05T14:14:27Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2016_AnneLouiseDias.pdf: 1759079 bytes, checksum: ad5f7a60f234df97b63e4e11a6cac866 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Raquel Viana(raquelviana@bce.unb.br) on 2016-09-02T20:49:47Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2016_AnneLouiseDias.pdf: 1759079 bytes, checksum: ad5f7a60f234df97b63e4e11a6cac866 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-02T20:49:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2016_AnneLouiseDias.pdf: 1759079 bytes, checksum: ad5f7a60f234df97b63e4e11a6cac866 (MD5) / Ainda clandestina na esfera canônica, a leitura da obra de Sade, como afirma Eliane Robert Moraes, pode levar a inúmeros equívocos, reduzindo o autor a reflexões sobre o sadismo ou fundindo-o à discursos científicos. As reverberações das escritas do marquês de Sade, entretanto, não se restringem às tentativas de sua compreensão; influente e vivamente presente em diversos escritores, o modelo sadiano é recuperado e homenageado em La marchande d’enfants, romance epistolar de Gabrielle Wittkop e publicado em 2003. O estilo de escrita de Wittkop abre-nos espaço para o estudo de sua obra como ambas uma retomada e uma atualização do próprio marquês. Desejamos no presente trabalho abarcar as representações dos desvios sexuais preconizados em Sade como um duplo jogo da linguagem: Sade e Wittkop teatralizam as ações violentas de suas personagens, jogando com a imagética, a representação e a imaginação, mas, para além disso, manejando a linguagem de forma a testar todos seus limites. Gabrielle Wittkop tentaria, em La marchande d’enfants, alcançar, pelo grotesco, pelo mal e pela perversão, o absurdo fazendo conscientemente uso da violência própria à linguagem, atacando, penetrando e testando as fronteiras do eu, do leitor e, finalmente, da literatura. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT / Still foreign to the canon of Western Literature, the examination of the oeuvre of the Marquis de Sade can lead to numerous misunderstandings, as stated by Eliane Robert Moraes, such as reducing his output to reflections on sadism or merging it with scientific discourse. The repercussions of De Sade’s work, however, are not limited to critical attempts toward its understanding; influential and strongly present in several writers, De Sade’s model is recovered and honored in La marchande d'enfants, an epistolary novel authored by Gabrielle Wittkop and published in 2003. Wittkop`s writing style opens the space for the study of her work as both a renewal and an update of the Marquis himself. In the present work we wish to encompass the representations of sexual deviancy professed in Sade as a double play on language: De Sade and Wittkop dramatize the violent actions of their characters, playing with imagery, representation and imagination, but, in addition, manipulating the language in order to test all of its limits. Gabrielle Wittkop would attempt to achieve absurdity through the grotesque, evil and perversion, consciously making use of the language inherent violence in La marchande d'enfants, attacking, penetrating and testing the boundaries of the ego, the reader and finally literature itself.