Montaigne said it himself: "The titles of (his) chapters, embrace not always the matter" (Florio). In fact many of the 109 titles that comprise the three books of the Essais have nothing or little to do with the text they introduce. Why this lack of congruence? Where, when and how does it manifest itself? This study attempts to answer these questions in a diachronic and semiotic perspective. Starting with a typology of the various title functions--identificational, illocutionary, perlocutionary and contractual, the author proceeds to an analysis of the different title manifestations in the text and tries to demonstrate that the discrepancy between titles and contents originates from an evolving poetics that tends toward the absence of shape.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.26348 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Vaillancourt, Luc |
| Contributors | Bonin, Diane Desrosiers (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: 001431293, proquestno: MM99944, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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