"du feminin dans a la recherche du temps perdu, de marcel proust"
Institution:
Paris 7Disciplines:
Directors:
Abstract EN:
This dissertation consists of three parts, each of which is divided into two chapters exploring alternately the female characters and the places that mark remembrance of things past. From odette to combray, from oriane to balbec, from albertine to gomorrah, a movement is apparent in proust's novel that, beyond the analogy between women and places, is suggestive of a more profound analogy between the body as place, or place as the (female) body. In shifting to-and-fro, from the mosaic of maternal - or more precisely maternal "feminine - themes coloring combray to the feminity of which odette is the veritable embodiment, from the "third sex", as radiant as it is ambiguous, of the young girls of balbec to the triumphant sensuality of the duchess, whose witticisms, however, dissimulate a hatred of women that is nothing other than a self-hatred, or again, from the lost country of gomorrah to the corrosive negativity of albertine, proust weaves a web drawing ever tighter together his own psychic territories, where the fascination for woman as enigma coexists with a hatred of the feminine in its dual aspect of mystification and falsehood. But, by the same stroke, proust presents us with an archaic site that both relates to and is replete with an unattainable jouissance or ecstasy, as invisible as it is ineffable; this site finds its metaphor in gomorrah as the most acute and hazardous expression of a feminine bisexuality. Freud's theory of female sexuality - in particular his hypotheses and investigations concerning the pre-oedipal phase of female psychosexuality - guides this exploration of the main female characters of proust's novel in providing the perspective in which to gauge the illustration and development of the diverse notions of femininity, the feminine and bisexuality wrought in the remembrance of things past.
Abstract FR:
Cette etude qui se divise en trois parties comportant deux chapitres chacune fait alterner lieux et figures feminines de la recherche : de combray a odette, de balbec a oriane, de gomorrhe a albertine un mouvement, sensible dans le roman, laisse deviner, au-dela de l'analogie entre femme et lieu, une analogie plus profonde entre le corps comme lieu ou le lieu comme corps (du) feminin. De la marqueterie des themes du feminin maternel de combray a la feminite incarnee par odette, du "troisieme sexe" radieux et ambigu des jeunes filles a la sensualite triomphale de la duchesse qui cache, sous ses bons mots, une haine des femmes en forme de haine de soi, du pays perdu de gomorrhe a la negativite corrosive de son heroine albertine, l'ecrivain batit la trame de plus en plus serree de ses propres territoires psychiques, ou se conjuguent la fascination pour la femme comme enigme, et une haine du feminin comme mystification et mensonge ; mais aussi ou se construit un site original, lien et lieu d'une jouissance inatteignable aussi bien qu'invisible et indicible, dont la metaphore tourne autour de gomorrhe comme figure la plus aigue et la plus risquee d'une bisexualite exploree du cote du feminin. C'est a la lumiere de la theorie freudienne de la sexualite feminine, et en particulier des hypotheses et des investigations concernant la phase preoedipienne dans la psychosexualite de la femme, que se developpe cette exploration des figures feminines majeures de la recherche et que s'elaborent et s'illustrent, dans l'oeuvre de proust, les notions de feminin, feminite et bisexualite.