Le mythe littéraire comme fait de mémoire
The Literary Myth as a Fact of Memory

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the production of the literary myth from the perspective of semiosis and perceptive semiosis according to Umberto Eco. It shows that, though the referent is always modified by the occurrences and the different kinds of encounters with the myth, the literary myth finds its coherence thanks to invariants. The latter are not to be found in the narrative as it was long claimed. Rather, they are attached to the hero who, therefore, becomes the founder of a social and collective phenomenon. Consisting of a myth or of an ideology, which corresponds to the mentality of the context of reception, the invariants fascinate and mobilize the public to such an extent that they emancipate themselves from the literary text to move from one medium to another, allowing the hero to become a full-fledged convention. The question of invariants brings that of the strategy in the original text, which could generate a readership capable of identifying and transmitting them, hence maintaining the literary myth in the collective memory.

• Details
• Contents