Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Landolsi, Houda

Titel

Le verbe d'ève: parole féminine, manipulation et pouvoir dans la religieuse de denis diderot

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Based on the assumption that any language, and particularly verbal communication, seeks, deliberately or not, to have an impact on others, our study is as a reflection on the power of language in general and especially of verbal language, in establishing inter-community and inter-subjective relations in Diderot’s posthumous novel The Nun. Therefore, our analysis aims to examine deliberate and spontaneous strategies that assign power and authority to the speech. The Word in The Nun is powerful, not only because it arouses deep feelings, it changes opinions and beliefs, but also because it makes others take actions. Contrary to what Suzanne, the heroine of the novel, claims, the use of the word—especially in the inter-subjective communications—has always a persuasive aim, sometimes unacknowledged, sometimes involuntary, but never absent. We will examine the problem of inter-subjective interaction through its various manifestations in a text that never reveals all its secrets and that always defying interpretations attributed to it.The question of manipulation, which cuts across various fields…—such as seduction, persuasion, conviction—without being identified with any of them, will be at the center of our concerns.What we are interested in are not only the ‘words’ that the novel’s characters say or write, but also the reasons that led these characters to choose and use them. The will to convince, to persuade or to dissuade others, which appears powerfully in several enigmatic phrases that populate The Nun, is not an end in itself. Influencing others is the aim of all the characters. And if any language is a network of relationships, manipulation is its mainstay.