Authoritative discourse and moral paradigms in the novels of Marguerite Yourcenar.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Alesch, Jeanine Stephanie.

Contributor:

Prince, Gerald, advisor.

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature.

Romance-language literature.

0313.

0591.

Penn dissertations--Romance languages.

Romance languages--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

Penn dissertations--Romance languages.

Romance languages--Penn dissertations.

0313.

0591.

Physical Description:

252 pages

Contained In:

Dissertation Abstracts International 57-11A.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

Summary:

In the extensive paratextual materials that accompany her novels and stories, Yourcenar manifests a profound awareness of her own status as an author; she inscribes this preoccupation in her fictional corpus by developing dense thematic equivalences of language and writing, ultimately suggesting that literary creation enables one to surpass the limitations of one's historical situation and accede to a truer and more eternal realm. Written texts however are subject to misreadings, and the affirmation of the writerly activity is constantly juxtaposed with a deep mistrust of readers. In this dissertation I examine the conflicts that permeate Yourcenar's vision of the authorial endeavor. Basing my work on Yourcenar's six novels, as well as the novella Un Homme obscur and two stories, "Anna, soror ... " and "Une Belle matinee," I identify the auto-referential aspects of each text, articulating the tension that underlies the narrative act. Drawing from the works of Booth, Genette, Prince, Chambers and others, I examine the relationships that the works' narrators and implied authors maintain with the various characters, as well as the ones they negotiate with their "narratees" and "implied readers." In this way I analyze the power structures that are explicitly or implicitly constructed by each text. Frequently, issues of power and authority are connected to moral judgments, a significant fact given Yourcenar's penchant for choosing "transgressive" subjects. I use the evaluative comments of narrators, and the more covert commentary of implied authors, to identify the "moral" attitude that governs each work, finally focusing on the ways in which the implied reader is implicated in the text's "moral" scheme. Clearly there is an evolution in the Yourcenarian corpus from her earlier, highly authoritarian texts, to the later works in which meaning is more subtly delineated or imposed. Ultimately, Yourcenar appears to grow increasingly accepting of the possibilities that are opened up due to the imperfection and incompletion of the written word; she reveals that literature may serve as a means of surpassing even the most eternal configuration of the self.

Notes:

Thesis (Ph.D. in Romance Languages) -- University of Pennsylvania, 1996.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-11, Section: A, page: 4765.

Supervisor: Gerald Prince.

Local Notes:

School code: 0175.

ISBN:

9780591204438

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.