Abstract EN:

First part: Styron’s insistence on man's anxiety in a world the "reality" of which escapes him. Such an experience entails a double characteristic: narcissism (defence of the self) and schizoid symptoms (means of fighting back the prevailing feeling of absence). Absence as such generates guilt. The other is felt as a threat and or a mystery and Styron’s heroes tend to deny or to reify others (through dreams for example) when they cannot see others as a part of themselves. Second part: it emphasizes the threat that the other represents for the self. It leads to the violent relations between heroes. The self aims at being admired or at dominating others. The self tries to assert himself using all possible means. Rebellion appears to be the last stage in this self-assertion but is bound to fail because the characters have in themselves what they want to destroy. Social criticism is quite irrelevant in Styron’s work. Third part: it focusses on Styron’s strategies to fulfil; his (inordinate) ambition to become a successful writer. Contradictorily, he tries both to fathom the invisible and to stress the visible. He asserts (not always convincingly) his culture and is a careful (but overwriting) stylist. Conversely, he has recourse to the sensational (themes, increasing use of violence and sex, structures). Because of that, his work offers a confused blending of fiction and "reality". The use of autobiography increases this confusion but Styron cannot avoid it because of infantile fixations. Styron's fiction is weakened for all this and for a didactic vein which betrays his faith in the didactic value of literature and in the power of language.