Michel Butor belongs to the group of writers who originated the New Novel in France in the early nineteen fifties. A decade later, Gerard Bessette, among others, inaugurated the Quebec New Novel. / An initial reading of the novels of Butor and Bessette enables one to discern arresting similarities between their surface structures. There is a strong tendency among their characters to bring order into the disorderly world in which they live. Their endeavor is thwarted by the authoritarian figures they confront. The failure of the heroes reveals to them that their speech is inadequate and their voices lack authority. This study attempts to investigate the functioning of authoritarian discourses and to establish the correspondences between the latent/unconscious structures in the novels of the two writers. / Applying contemporary critical theories of discourse, especially those of Mikhail Bakhtin and Michel Foucault, the study examines various types of authoritarian discourses. These discourses are defined and classified under each of the three principal orders identified in the novels. Maternal and paternal discourses are grouped in the familial order, religious, professorial and judicial discourses in the social order, and mythological, legendary and ancestral discourses in the historical order. / The introduction establishes the fundamental relationships between the works of Butor and Bessette, and lays out the theoretical aspects of the study. Each of the three chapters analyzes the interaction between discourses, and the negotiation of authority through discourse in a particular order. The first chapter focuses on the subversion of authoritarian voices in the familial order. The second chapter examines the characters' search for parental substitutes in the social order, and demonstrates the insufficiency of authority in the latter. The failure of the first two orders leads the characters to pursue their quest in the historical order. The assimilation of historical discourses enables the characters to regain their right to speak. The conclusion argues that the narrative authority exercised through writing/speaking is disseminated in the intertextual space. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: A, page: 1346. / Major Professor: Elaine D. Cancalon. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77406 |
| Contributors | Rangarajan, Sudarsan., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 194 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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