L’armée, livre des hommes : passeurs de symboles et personnages liminaires dans Servitude et grandeur militaires d’Alfred de Vigny
The army or the book of men: symbol transmitters and liminal characters in Alfred de Vigny’s Servitude et grandeur militaires

Summary/Abstract: During his time in the army, Vigny noticed the slow and inevitable disappearance of the old grumblers. For him, these antique men are both archaic and noble, which is why, with Servitude et grandeur militaires, he tries to criticize the military institution, and record the teachings of these veterans simultaneously. These men represent a particular type of master, as their teachings must be both received and surpassed. Following the logic of rites of passage, we propose an ethnocritic reading of Vigny’s poetic, and try to reconstruct the narrative architecture of a pedagogical experience. We believe the latter is organized around the presence of liminal characters which serve as transmitters. We then study the narrator’s critical appropriation of these teachings, which we read as a mise en abyme of the critical attitude to which Vigny invites his readers. This way, we bring out the formative value of the fiction of that romantic writer.

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