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(aggression) and remorse. For good measure the same epigraph also inserts the hint ''piège'' (trap). |
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Chapter 3 has no story, but is absolutely important apropos of the second isotopy. Apparently, the reader is invited to imagine what happens in the privacy of the alcove. The epigraph recalls to the cultivated reader a quotation from Donne: "For God's sake hold your tongue and let me love." More malicious sexual connotations can be added. But from the point of view of isotopy 2, this empty space is an invitation to the reader to write 'ghost' chapters by himself. And he will, as we shall see, after chapter 4. While inviting cooperation in filling up empty narrative spaces, Allais gives, however, an explicit warning: hold your tongue, do not speak too much, you will risk spoiling the coherence of the story. Thus the epigraph contradicts the suggestion given by the empty space. |
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If chapter 2 is dominated by the theme of infidelity (L'infidèle), chapter 4 is dominated by the theme of incoherence (bal des Incohérents). The title suggests confusion and intrusion. Explicitly it says that people should not get involved with things that are none of their affair. Implicitly it says: Do not mix yourself up with my job! |
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Additional connotations of incoherence are the 'fin de siècle' Templar and the very idea of a mask imitating a Congolese pirogue. But in the same chapter the suggestions directing toward isotopy 1 are much too strong: the letters, /ces billets ne tombèrent pas dans les oreilles de deux sourds/, dissimulation, false innocence. . . . |
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Note that in chapters 1-6 jealousy is always aroused by a text: a song in chapter 1, a play in chapter 2, a letter in chapter 4, a newspaper in chapter 5. Nothing is referentially validated, everything is a matter of belief (and of a false one). |
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We have also seen that throughout the story the author is continuously present through a series of speech acts expressing his own attitude vis-à>-vis the events and the characters. These interventions have the function of disturbing the naive identification with the isotopy 1. They stress the metalinguistic presence of the narrator so as to produce effects of de-familiarization or of Verfremdung (as in Brecht's epic theater). |
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Were the reader adequately alerted, chapter 2 would function as a reduced model of the whole story, offering him the possibility of detecting the tricking strategy displayed by the author. This chapter could be deleted without compromising the intelligibility of the story. The events here reported do not form part of the fabula. However, chapter 2 reproduces, as in a sort of miniature, all the discursive and narrative structures of Drame. |
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After a long and dramatic scene of jealousy (where each of the pro- |
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