Le corps et la maladie dans les recits realistes. (1856-1893)
Institution:
Toulouse 2Disciplines:
Directors:
Abstract EN:
Our intentions in this thesis, has been to analyze the literary representations of the body tortured by illness. In this prospect, we have studied scientific ideologies which, in the second half of the 19th century determine what is morbidity, deviancy, insanity. The physio logical codes have been analyzed, as well as the way used by realist novelist to insert, in the stories, a medical documentation. Then, our attention has been focussed on the metaphors which identify society, language to an organic whole. Besides, it was necessary to study the reasons which made the writer describe mysticism, the sufferings of the artists to elaborate their works of art, as a kind of illness. Finally, we have noticed that realism, alway trying to penetrate through the secrets of flesh, is torn by two conflicting tensions : this form of esthetism intends to embody real life, in reference to analytic knowledge of doctors, it constantly suggests that a negative pulsion can be found in the very impulse for life.
Abstract FR:
Dans cette these, on s'est propose d'analyser les rapports qu'entretiennent, dans la deuxieme moitie du xixeme siecle, les representations litteraires du corps avec les doctrines medicales, les ideologies scientifiques qui definissent ce qui est morbidite, deviance, deraison. Outre les codes physiologiques sur lesquels repose la description des personnages, on a etudie la maniere dont les romanciers enchassaient dans les recits la documentation clinique engrangee dans les avant-textes. Notre attention s'est ensuite fixee sur les metaphores qui assimilent la societe, le langage, a une totalite organique. Il importait enfin de degager les raisons qui incitent les ecrivains a decrire le mysticisme ou les tourments de la creation artistique comme une sorte de maladie. Il nous est apparu, au terme de ce travail, que "le realisme", constamment soucieux de percer les secrets de la chair, vit d'une tension permanente : il cherche a donner corps au reel, par reference au savoir analytique des medecins, il suggere au moyen d'images, le role d'une dynamique negative, inscrite au coeur meme de l'elan vital.