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2 février 2018
- handle: 10670/1.6jsfn5
- isbn: 9782878544084
- eisbn: 9782878548600
https://www.openedition.org/12554 , info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
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poésie roman Angleterre objet référent chose Literature, British Isles Literature American LIT014000 DSCCiter ce document
Pascale Antolin, « Le cours des choses, les discours de l’objet dans McTeague de Frank Norris », Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, ID : 10670/1.6jsfn5
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This paper seeks to demonstrate the major part played by things in Frank Norris’s McTeague (1899)—the starting point being the distinction established between things and objects by Claude Duchet in an article about objects in Madame Bovary. At the beginning of McTeague, things reign supreme in the heroes’ apartment, as if to establish the referential background of the novel—even though their role is not just referential but also symbolic. They create a sense of imprisonment and suggest McTeague’s and Trina’s identities, be they social, sexual or cultural. When poverty threatens the couple, all these things are sold to the highest bidder but for a few items, which McTeague clings to at any cost. They appear to be love objects for him, whereas for Trina no thing is more valuable than her gold coins. The disappearance of things, that is consumer goods, signals both the beginning of the naturalistic process of deterioration and the shift from a mostly realistic approach to a more romantic one. Gradually things turn into highly symbolic, even polysemic objects. This evolution from things to objects points to Norris’s conception of naturalism, a combination of realism and romanticism.