Langage de l'ébauche : parole intérieure extériorisée

Abstract

This paper sets out the linguistically relevant features of a particular kind of writing, the outline, or ébauche as Zola calls it, which is not yet a text but which is supposed to prepare for it: this function implies many self-injunctions, evaluations, interrogations. The example that is being analysed, the outline of Zola's Bête humaine, suggests several explanatory hypotheses: an "externalised inner speech", an interlocution between a writing-I and a reading-I, and a speech act through which the "I" generates a program for a world about to be created through writing. The so-called "performative" hypothesis subsumes these three approaches. According to it, the outline is a performative act, giving a tangible form to an inner discourse, involving two agencies (the writer and the reader) mirroring the splitting of the subject. At the end of the paper, this analysis of the outline is extended to cover every kind of avant-texte.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 37 citations exist upstream.