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1997
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Béatrice Trotignon, « L’oeil et le regard, ou la crise du témoignage dans Blood Meridian de Cormac McCarthy », Revue Française d'Études Américaines (documents), ID : 10.3406/rfea.1997.1697
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Résumé
In McCarthy's Blood Meridian the reader is constantly made to hesitate between opposed and fluctuating modes of reading. The act of witnessing (certainly a crux of the novel as is implied by its opening words "See the child") and that of interpreting undergo a severe crisis, not only through the deviation of such conventions as the use of an epilogue and chapter headings, but more forcibly through the shifts in focalization. These shifts occur in such ways as to deepen the rift between the characters' external and impersonal perception, and a more mythical vision which remains however just as distanced and inadequate for the reader. Sight, blindness and the ultimate disappearance of various pieces of evidence, tracks or symbols in the novel bear out this overall crisis stating a break in the dialectic of fact and meaning.
