In this thesis entitled "Guy de Maupassant: l'engendrement du romanesque", the author proposes to demonstrate that Maupassant's six novels constitute a "trajectory", a progression driven and informed by an underlying logic. Proceeding from a psychoanalytical point of view, the author has uncovered another novel, an unspoken novel, that unfolds with Maupassant's novelistic production. This "other novel" expresses the engendering of the subject, which can be defined as the son-subject's liberation from the primal maternal dominion, thanks to the process of identification with the father. / Maupassant's six novels mark various stages in this trajectory. The primal novel Une vie establishes the problematics of the maternal dominion. In Bel-Ami can be seen the formation of the matrix of identity, which coincides with the emergence of the son-subject. The two central novels, Mont-Oriol and Pierre et Jean, illustrate the traumatic experience of paternity and filiation; the latter novel shows the relinquishment of narcissistic defense mechanism. Subsequently, in Fort comme la mort, the repressed narcissistic wound can be analysed. With the final novel, Notre coeur, the son-subject achieves the father position, thus escaping the madness associated with the double-bind of the ambivalent mother. / Previous criticism devoted to the works of Guy de Maupassant has focussed on the thematic obsession of paternity and filiation. This thesis sets out to demonstrate that this obsession is also the very principle driving the engenderment of the novel.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.39988 |
| Date | January 1996 |
| Creators | Roy, Alain, 1965- |
| Contributors | Rivard, Yvon (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Département de langue et littérature françaises.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001499961, proquestno: NN12469, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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