This essay focuses on the way in which three narrative devices expand upon three types of love depicted in Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye. The three narrative devices examined in this essay are narrator, paratext and the irony of the Breedlove family name. These devices all serve the purpose of conveying different types of love in Morrison’s novel and how these types of love affect the characters of the novel, especially the protagonist Pecola Breedlove. Narrator plays an important role because the narrative voice changes throughout the novel, shifting between Claudia MacTeer and a third-person omniscient narrator. This shifting perspective shows the reader how the types of love affect Pecola both through a child’s perspective and as well as through third-person narration. The Dick and Jane paratext contrasts the Breedlove family to white American ideals of familial love and happiness. Finally, the lack of familial love within the Breedlove family truly shows the irony of the Breedlove family name. The lack of love forces Pecola to internalize her self-hatred while the destructive, distant and judgmental relationship between Mrs. Breedlove and Pecola causes both characters to become delusional and dissatisfied with their sense of self. Friendship is the only place where Pecola finds love, shown to her by Claudia and Frieda; however, Pecola has already descended too far into madness for their love to help her. Although Pecola should find solace in the three types of love that are presented through the novel’s narrative devices, they all contribute to her disillusionment and, ultimately, her descent into madness.

La présente étude vise à explorer les mécanismes scripturaux d’oeuvres littéraires qui thématisent le retour au pays natal. À partir d’un corpus formé de romans publiés par des écrivains expatriés, elle ambitionne de démontrer l’adéquation de leur forme à leur contenu. À cet égard, La contrainte de l’inachevé d’Anthony Phelps, Pays sans chapeau de Dany Laferrière et Les urnes scellées d’Émile Ollivier répondent au critère de fictions qui associent étroitement thème et structure, sens et composition, fond et forme. Ces trois romans, en effet, procèdent de choix structurels et thématiques qui découlent du principe du retour, défini comme la propension à se soumettre à un mouvement régressif ou, pour le dire plus clairement, à évoluer à reculons dans le temps aussi bien que dans l’espace. Deux axes sont ainsi retenus afin de mettre en évidence le fil conducteur de notre recherche : le retour définitif au pays natal et le retour en alternance entre le pays d’accueil et le pays d’origine. Le premier axe prend en considération la volonté de réinstallation permanente dans leur société de provenance de certains personnages de roman exilés, l’enquête, la répétition, l’interprétation, le rituel, l’affiliation constituant les manifestations textuelles du parcours de ces individus. Quant au deuxième axe, il est focalisé sur l’aller-retour entre deux territoires de personnages romanesques, et se traduit par l’affleurement dans les récits de l’entre-deux, du motif du double, de l’autoréférentialité, de la mise en abyme et par la place réservée aux zombis, aux sosies, aux rêves ou aux miroirs. La recherche est ainsi parvenue à établir que le retour, comme signification, va de pair avec le retour, comme principe de composition, dans les romans analysés. Sur le plan de l’énonciation, chez Ollivier, Laferrière et Phelps, des procédés scripturaux font toujours écho, sur le plan de l’énoncé, au geste régressif des personnages de fiction. / The purpose of this study is to explore the scriptural mechanisms of literary works that thematize the return to the homeland. Based on a corpus of novels published by expatriate writers, it aims to demonstrate the adequacy of their form to their content. In this regard, La contrainte de l'inachevé by Anthony Phelps, Pays sans chapeau by Dany Laferrière, Les urnes scellées by Émile Ollivier meet the criteria of fictions which closely associate theme and structure, meaning and composition, substance and form. These three novels are based on structural and thematic choices that stem from the principle of return, defined as the propensity to submit to a regressive movement or, to put it more clearly, to evolve backwards in time as well as in space. Two axes are thus chosen to highlight the main theme of our research: the definitive return to the country of birth and the return alternately between the host country and the country of origin. The first axis takes into consideration the will for permanent resettlement in their society from certain exiles, the investigation, the repetition, the interpretation, the ritual, the affiliation constituting the textual manifestations of what animates these migrants. As for the second axis, it is focused on the round trip between two territories of fictional characters and is reflected in the stories by the outcrop in the narratives of the motif of the double, the in-between, self-referentiality, of the mise en abyme and by the place reserved for zombies, doppelgangers, dreams, mirrors, etc. This research has thus managed to establish that return as meaning goes hand in hand with return as a principle of composition in the novels analyzed. In Ollivier, Laferrière and Phelps, with the regressive gesture of the fictional characters, on the level of the statement, always echoes in the texts, on the level of the enunciation, the scriptural processes characterized by the principle of return.