Publication details
Le langage et l’émergence de la narration dans Les Anthropoides de Gérard Bessette
| Title in English | Language and Emergence of Narration in Les Anthropoides (1977) by Gérard Bessette |
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | Bands of anthropoids, some still quadrumane, other already biped, fight with each other for dominating the savannah, abducting females, eliminating competitive males. Between ethology and ethics, the human society and the memory are constituted by the magic of speech. A young narrator, Guito, tries to figure out the founding story of a future tribe by reconciling three enemy bands. The experimental, corporeal language of Bessette’s novel seeks to enter into the animal mind of the prehistoric man. At the same time, Guito’s apprenticeship of a powerful storytelling is caught between the truth and the efficiency. The analysis is divided into two chapters: the first one describes the corporeal vocabulary at different levels of the text; the second one pays attention to the axiology of the storytelling, namely its ethical aspects and consequences. The character of the storyteller Guito represents an interesting variant of a romancier fictif (Belleau, Černíková) in the frame of Quebec literature. Moreover the novel offers an intense reflection on the relationship between literature and society, that one of the 1970’s in particular. |
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