Alceste’s Narratives: an (Inter)textual Approach Cover Image

Récits d’Alceste : une approche (inter)textuelle
Alceste’s Narratives: an (Inter)textual Approach

Author(s): Edit Bors
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: Intertextuality; misanthropy; the Natural Man; the Artificial Man; the Absurd Man

Summary/Abstract: This paper is concerned with the relationship between different texts dealing with misanthropy; more precisely, it examines the manifestations of rewritten forms of the story of Molière’s Alceste, by revealing the moral ambiguities inscribed in this character. The selected prose — Rousseau’s Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, Gide’s L’Immoraliste, Huysmans’s A rebours, Maupassant’s Un cas de divorce, Kafka’s Le terrier and Le départ — is the focus of this (inter)textual analysis concentrating on text-formatting tools that exhibit special narrative features in the structure of the discussed texts. It is argued that different manifestations of misanthropy — represented by the Natural Man, the Artificial Man and the Absurd Man — are closely connected with textual characteristics.

  • Issue Year: 2010
  • Issue No: 5
  • Page Range: 65-76
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: French