La conversion de Durtal dans La Cathédrale, Carrefour de métamorphoses sociales, spirituelles et sémantiques

• Authors: Aleksandra Kamińska

Title variants

EN

The Conversion of Durtal in The Cathedral as a Crossroads of Social, Spiritual and Semantic Transformations

Abstracts

EN

The present paper explores Durtal’s conversion as the refusal of any fixed reference. The reflections of the hero on his personal experience, but also on the social transformations are characterised by the metaphysical seriousness and semantic experiments. The constant lexical substitution arouses the curiosity of the reader: its referential opacity is only apparent. Thus, the writer emphasizes that going beyond the beaten path requires a new mode of expression where meaning no longer depends on the rehashing of commonplaces, but relies on semantic mismatches and prolonged tensions between juxtaposed terms. Likewise, social transformations strongly disapproved of by the hero become the source of paradoxical reasoning where truth is expressed through the negativity of judgment. Nevertheless, despite the lucidity of his social and ethical judgments, Durtal remains blind to the imperfection of his own conversion. Moreover, the frequent recourse to paradox demonstrates that the protagonist is still in doubt which announce a long spiritual path of true conversion.

Keywords

EN

conversion; <i>The Cathedral</i>; paradox; semantic experiments; reader

• Publisher: Komisja Nauk Filologicznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Oddział we Wrocławiu
• Journal: Academic Journal of Modern Philology
• Year: 2022
• Volume: Special Issue
• Issue: 17
• Pages: 219-224

Dates

published

2022

Contributors

author

Aleksandra Kamińska

• Uniwersytet Szczecinski

• https://orcid.org/0000000164979666

References

• Cressot, Marcel ([1938] 1975) La Phrase et le Vocabulaire de J.-K. Huysmans. Genève: Slatkine Reprints [Paris: Éditions de Paris].
• Guérin-Marmigère, Stéphanie (2010) La Poétique romanesque de Joris-Karl Huysmans. Paris: Honoré Champion.
• Huysmans, Joris-Karl ([1898] 2017) La Cathédrale. Paris: Gallimard [Paris: Tresse & Stock].
• Rey, Alain Fabienne Verdier (2020) Le Petit Robert de la langue française. Paris: Le Robert.
• Riffaterre, Michael (1992) « Paradoxes décadents ». [In:] Mary Shaw, François Cornilliat (dir.) Rhétoriques fin de siècle. Paris: Christian Bourgois; 65–80.
• Séginger, Gisèle (1995) « À Rebours de Huysmans : la lévitation du sens ». [In:] Nineteenth-Century French Studies. Vol. 23, n° 3/4; 479–487.
• Vircondelet, Alain (1995) Huysmans, entre grâce et péché. Paris: Beauchesne.
• Vircondelet, Alain (2012) « Huysmans et la trilogie ». [In:] La Revue des Lettres Modernes 2. Vol. 2; 11–32.

Identifiers

DOI

10.34616/ajmp.2022.17.20

Biblioteka Nauki

2233990