Les statuts du nom dans les romans de Raymond Queneau

The proper name is generally accepted as an important element in the interpretation of a given novel thus the bovin implied in Bovary reinforces our perception of that character's personality, and probably helps us to form that perception. This traditional onomastic approach restricts itself to the semantic sense of a given name, its role as metaphor for the character it names.There is, however, no reason to assume that the literary name acts only in this very limited manner. We might, for instance, ask ourselves if the use made of all the names in a given novel, taken as a whole, might display some degree of sense: how do the characters (and the narrator) react to the introduction or the use of a name, to the idea of a name? How much faith do they place in names? Is it important to know names? And how does the status attributed to the name relate to the status attributed to knowledge in general?The novels of Raymond Queneau can be read as an exploration of such questions: the problems posed by categorization, knowledge and the idea of existence recur throughout his works, and are repeatedly linked to and expressed by the importance that his characters ascribe to the proper name. A close analysis of five of his novels (Le Chiendent, Un Rude Hiver, Pierrot mon ami, Le Dimanche de la vie, and Les Oeuvres completes de Sally Mara) shows us not only the (variable) ideological content behind every use of a proper name, but also the extent to which these implicit ideologies affect the philosophical sense of the novel in question.The goal of this thesis, then, is to explore this relationship and to examine its workings at the same time, however, it suggests that this approach may be applicable to all fiction, and thus seeks to illustrate another approach to the literary name.