Faulkner nouvelliste : tradition et modernité
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Bordeaux 3Disciplines:
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Abstract EN:
William faulkner's short stories, which he regarded as pot-boilers, reveal his attachment to literary traditions, especially to the genre's conventions, to the realistic and oral traditions. Still, he deceitfully subverts these traditions and these plays with the intertext show his modernity. This modernity pervades the faulknerian text : the narrative technique, the representation of inner life mirror the chaos of modern times. Besides, the short fiction oscillates between shapelessness and formal compactness. Faulkner is yearning for the unity of a total work and his short stories constitute self-referential and intertextual constellations. By revising some myths, he wants to turn fiction into a new cosmos and to transcend the nothingness generated by modernity. In fact, although the structures and the style of his experimental short stories are definitely modern, historical modernity, which destroys nature and reifies men, is criticized by the writer. The latter is submitted to some economic constraints which lead him to denounce the dangers of materialism and mass culture. The description of the antebellum south is tinged with irony but also testifies to his conservatism, for he laments over the collapse of the chivalric tradition and a lot of characters feel nostalgic. Modern heroes and antiheroes wander in a divided world where woman often symbolizes evil. Yet, faulkner, though obsessed by purity, highlights the excesses of puritanism. Actually, this idealist rejects the nihilism that will characterize postmodernity and strives to find a code adapted to the modern world and based on the traditional values inherited from the christian and pioneer traditions.
Abstract FR:
Les nouvelles de william faulkner, qu'il considerait comme alimentaires, temoignent de son attachement aux traditions litteraires, en particulier aux conventions du genre, aux traditions realiste et orale. Mais il subvertit sournoisement ces traditions et les jeux avec l'intertexte montrent sa modernite qui envahit le texte faulknerien : la technique narrative, la representation de la vie interieure refletent le chaos de l'epoque moderne. De plus, l'oeuvre oscille entre l'informe et la densite formelle. Faulkner desire retrouver l'unite d'une oeuvre totale et les nouvelles forment des constellations autoreferentielles et intertextuelles. Revisant certains mythes, il veut faire de la fiction un nouveau cosmos et transcender le neant de la modernite. En fait, bien que les structures et le style de ses nouvelles experimentales soient modernes, la modernite historique, qui detruit la nature et reifie l'homme, est condamnee par le nouvelliste soumis a des contraintes economiques qui le conduisent a denoncer les dangers du materialisme et le poids de la culture de masse. L'evocation du sud antebellum traduit a la fois l'ironie et le conservatisme de faulkner qui deplore la faillite de la tradition chevaleresque et peuple son univers de nostalgiques. Heros et antiheros modernes errent dans un monde divise ou les femmes symbolisent souvent le mal. Mais faulkner, bien qu'obsede par la purete, souligne les exces de la tradition puritaine. Cet idealiste rejette le nihilisme caracteristique de la postmodernite et s'efforce de trouver un code adapte au monde moderne, fonde sur des valeurs traditionnelles heritees de la tradition chretienne et de la tradition des pionniers.