La convergence des destins chez Thomas Hardy
In the diegesis of Hardy’s novels, when movements converge to a centre, it means that we are approaching ‘the central place’, ‘the intimate exteriority or “extimacy”’ which Lacan calls the Thing (Lacan 2008, 171). It means that the subject (i.e. the character) is very close to reaching Das Ding, the...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
2019-12-01
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| Series: | Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/cve/6047 |
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| Summary: | In the diegesis of Hardy’s novels, when movements converge to a centre, it means that we are approaching ‘the central place’, ‘the intimate exteriority or “extimacy”’ which Lacan calls the Thing (Lacan 2008, 171). It means that the subject (i.e. the character) is very close to reaching Das Ding, the only true object of his desire, ‘the absolute Other of the subject’ (Lacan 2008, 65). That may be said of all Hardy’s tragic novels: in Tess of the d’Urbervilles for instance, where Tess, lying on an altar stone at Stonehenge, soon to be surrounded by the police looking for her, is the very last picture that we have of her. We will focus on scenarios that show human destinies converging towards that central point, as well as on strategies used to revolve around the object of desire and keep it at a distance in Hardy’s non tragic novels, in Far from the Madding Crowd for instance. For it is only by going round the object that desire may be sustained and tragedy avoided—as illustrated by the archaic French word ‘quérir’, which refers to circa, detour (Lacan 2008, 71). We will show that Hardy’s écriture is not characterized by convergence but by divergence, by the dispersal of meaning into a multiplicity of possible interpretations. Unlike the ‘crushing, killing’ red letters painted by a religious fanatic which are ‘driven well home’ to Tess’s heart, Hardy’s poetic writing does not assign a unique place to its reader, who is not subjected to the tyranny of a centre. It encourages her/him to look awry, and allows meaning to flicker through the poetic play on language. |
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| ISSN: | 0220-5610 2271-6149 |