Rhetoric in Butor's L’Emploi du temps.
The function and interpretation of tropes in (post-)modern literature have greatly evolved. As Gérard Genette observes:“ The idea of reviving the code [of the ancient rhetoric] in order to apply it to our literature would be a sterile anachronism […] The self-signifying function of Literature is no longer conveyed through the code of figures, and modern literature has its own rhetoric” (Figures of Literary Discourse 58-59). The proposed study will apply structuralist and post-structuralist theories of tropes to show the dialectical engagement between the traditional and new novel techniques in L’Emploi du temps.
In L’Emploi du temps, the city of Bleston possesses human qualities, and in fact, is one of the narratee (It may be recalled that Robbe-Grillet excoriates the use of tropes, particularly anthropomorphism (47-49)). This paper will examine Butor’s use of tropes—metaphor, anaphora, anacoluthon, anthropomorphism and apostrophe—in new and interesting ways. For example, I propose to scrutinize the diegetic metaphor, that is, a metaphor that is derived from the narrative context in which it appears (Genette, Figures III 47-48) instead of the pervasive metaphor in its classical form. Anacoluthon is another example a trope that is transformed in Butor’s novel. Traditionally, anacoluthon “designates any grammatical or syntactical discontinuity in which a construction interrupts another before it is completed” (de Man, note 12, 189). I would like to argue that in L’Emploi du temps this phenomenon takes place at the narrative level. The interruptions take place for two reasons: First, because of the narrative’s temporal shuttling between the past and the present; second, because of the repetitions in the narrative.
The paper will also analyze other tropes that are closely tied to the diegesis: analepsis, prolepsis, syllepsis and metalepsis.
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