Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues' Le musee noir is a collection of short stories insidiously permeated by the monster figure in its most diverse forms. Far from being reduced to a simple thematic function, this omnipresence of the monstrous contributes to making the collection truly a whole by instilling it with an internal mode of operation. This rhetoric of the monstrous directs both the collection and each of the stories, all the while driving their dynamic of the fantastic. / The mandiarguian text acquires its fantastic dimension through a progressive transformation of the protagonist's point of view, inciting him to perceive his environment as a gigantic monstrous entity. Contact with this entity causes the protagonist's own personality to be replaced by that of the monster. Yet it is the woman who, as a representative of the sacred in the logic of fantastic stories, remains in Mandiargues' text the best incarnation of the monstrous figure. Man, who represents the profane, will emerge contaminated by the sacred from his encounter with the monstrous and devouring woman. This contagion is incarnated by the androgynous figure, which remains most convincingly represented within this work by the negro. Finally, by comparing Mandiargues' writing devices with the techniques used in horror museums of old for monsters stage exhibitions, we will be able to confirm our initial hypothesis: the monster figure, by being the motor of the fantastic element dynamic, is essential to the unity of the collection. / The second part of this work in literary creation is a collection of fantastic short stories, all of which feature the same troubling presence. This presence possesses several characteristics of the monster figure, as seen in the work of Mandiargues.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.31104 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Faucher, Evangeline. |
| Contributors | Boucher, Jean-Pierre (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 | Master of Arts (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: 001808341, proquestno: MQ70284, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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