Horreur et dérision dans quelques textes de jeunesse de Stephen Crane

Résumé 0

Most of the critical work inspired by Stephen Crane focuses on Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) and The Red Badge of Courage (1895). This article means to show that the narrative strategies which are at work in these masterpieces were already present, in embryo, in his earliest attempts at fiction: The Sullivan County sketches. All fourteen texts are studies in fear which offer a very original treatment of classic Gothic themes, by relying first on overstatement, then on debunking. Thus, “Four Men in a Cave” describes how the panic of four foolhardy young men in a stressful environment (a cave) reaches a climax in their confrontation with a “fiery-eyed” hermit who is, in fact, a poor devil crouching in the cave. In “The Octopush,” the same “heroes” hover on a Poesque marsh before meeting a “sepulchral” figure who turns out to be a mentally deranged drunkard. In “A Ghoul’s Accountant,” a terrifying character compels the protagonist to follow him… to ask him about the price of potatoes. The nocturnal landscape of “The Black Dog” is soon associated with death, but the dog which seems to be the source of the rampant terror is merely… a dog. Finally, “Killing His Bear” makes fun of the “little man” whose apparent feat is only a show of self-aggrandizement. The apparent simplicity of the plots conceals an experimental approach to fiction which succeeds in creating in the reader a number of automatic responses that are simultaneously invalidated by perversely complex narrative strategies.