| This dissertation focuses systematically on Nathalie Sarraute's techniques for representing subjectivity, especially as it manifests itself intersubjectively in what she calls tropisms. These are particular subterranean movements, interpenetrating, barely perceptible and unnamable, triggered in the course of everyday dialogues and situations. Since conventional language has a petrifying power and cannot express the fluidity or indefiniteness in the tropism, Sarraute has to appeal to rhetorical devices and literary strategies in order to give as appropriate a representation of such movements as possible. Tropisms imply relationality, they are seen primarily as responses to others. While articulating Sarraute's understanding of the self in its relation with others, this thesis highlights the novelty of the author's conception of character and the ingenuity of her artistic practices. The in-depth analysis of Nathalie Sarraute's novels ultimately reveals her conception of communication, of the distorting power of words, which are shown to have a peculiar effect on those who hear them. This technical reading frequently draws on the resources of linguistics, especially on the critical works by such figures as Benveniste, Jakobson, and Genette.; By means of an aesthetic analysis of five prose works--- Entre la vie et la mort, Tropismes, Portrait d'un inconnu, Les Fruits d'or and Ici---the dissertation shows the possibilities of language to represent a reality of a different order, but also the difficulties created and the questions raised by such a literary enterprise. It focuses, moreover, on the implications of Sarraute's writing for the reader. With regard to this matter, along with the fictional texts mentioned above, Sarraute's theoretical works and the interviews that she gave serve here as a basis for the examination of the text-reader relationship, as it is understood by the author and as it actually takes place. |
