21 octobre 2022
Clara de Courson, « « “Autant d’hommes, autant de cris divers.” Représentations acoustiques du discours chez Diderot » », HAL-SHS : linguistique, ID : 10670/1.l4eh68
The reputation of Diderot’s “voice” is now well-established: there is a contagious oral quality to his writing. This thesis endorses a stylistic methodology to make the inventory of the mechanisms that convey this acoustic illusion, by analysing how the representations of discourse structure Diderot’s auditory imagery. Starting at the lexical level, I survey the isotopic network of voice by focusing on some keywords. I detail the context of their apparitions, their textual neighbourhoods, and the semantic orientations they convey. Voix, ton, accent and, on the metaphoric side, ramage and caquet provide a first insight into Diderot’s discursive acoustic.In a second part, I examine how the narrative structure itself encompasses a vocal imagery. I study how Diderot’s fictions are structured by complex narratorial settings, how he reinvents the fiction of orality, and how ambiguously his work stands in relation to the epistolary model which was rapidly expanding at the time. I also list the different ways in which direct speech is clutched and marked, which are so many unobtrusive technics to incorporate the acoustic quality of someone else’s enunciation.The last part of the thesis is dedicated to the listening settings which Diderot puts in place. The numerous forms of acousmatic audition – distant audition, limited audition, remembered or imaginary sounds – are linked with the different forms of represented speech. Both are part of a reflection on sound virtualization and allow us to understand better the expressivity Diderot expects from fictional “voices”.