29 (2007)

Based on historical perspectives as well as on a construction grammar approach, this paper focuses on the semantic role played by the copula be , and to a lesser extent by être , in copular constructions. It posits that, semantically speaking, there is no such thing as a “colorless” copula for the speaker or cognizer. . . . [lire la suite]

Wallace Stevens’ assumptions on questions of line and lineation are nowhere as dramatically challenged as in one of his late poems, “Prologues To What Is Possible.” In this poem, Stevens suddenly lets go of his aversion for “straggling verse” and “tag ends of lines,” choosing a line-form that repeatedly runs over, altogether blurring the contours of the poem on the page. This paper suggests a reading of the poem as a dramatization . . . [lire la suite]

The aim of this paper is to focus on a double issue. On the one hand, it shows how a play so concerned with deceptive appearances and treachery as Shakespeare’s Macbeth contains a great number of puns, or occurrences of wordplay—a stylistic device used to create ambiguity. On the other, it examines the ways in which two French translators, Maurice Maeterlinck and Jean-Michel Déprats, have opted either for source or target-oriented . . . [lire la suite]

The starting point of this article is the monologue of the idiot Benjy Compson, the initial narrator in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929). Told by a narrator who is both deaf and dumb and hopelessly condemned to stupor, this monologue is built upon an impossible type of discourse, characterized by its apparent disconnectedness, disorganization and disorder. Yet it is upon this paradoxical discourse, which rests on the pre‑eminence . . . [lire la suite]

Devoted to Lily Prior's novel La Cucina , this paper explores the relationship between paratextual elements and the text itself, notably the spectacular rhetoric of abundance developed throughout the novel—a novel which turns out to be a narrative strategy of concealment. This strategy, which largely involves what Perec, in L’Œil ébloui, calls “[les] signes extérieurs de richesse”, rests on a variety of stylistic devices, both . . . [lire la suite]

This paper addresses the theoretical problem raised by In Cold Blood, in which Truman Capote painstakingly tries to minimise the marks of subjectivity inherent in the representation process. Contemporary readers now have access to two major biographies of Truman Capote and no fewer than three films which shed new light on both the story proper (i.e. the murders and the police investigation) and the time during which Capote wrote his book. Like . . . [lire la suite]

The oldest Scottish magazine, The Scots Magazine , founded in 1739, has not remained entirely immune to the clichés of the contemporary popular press. It has, however, retained some of its original qualities. Complex and seemingly antagonistic motifs are at work beneath the informal and apparent banal style of its articles. Chronicles extolling the lives of ordinary Scottish persons who have achieved excellence in one field or another . . . [lire la suite]

This article examines the ways in which Percival Everett’s critique of identity politics is facilitated by his use of parody and irony in Erasure (2001). Everett’s protagonist, Thelonious Ellison, is an African-American academic and writer who composes a parody of the stereotypically ‘black’ contemporary novel out of disgust at the excessively limited scope of what the commercially-oriented publishing world deems acceptable for . . . [lire la suite]

The enthymeme is a truncated syllogism that exerts persuasion not only through its logical construction but mainly through what remains unsaid. Whenever a premise is left unstated, “the hearer supplies”, as Aristotle says, what is missing. As the audience feel more willing to believe it, the rhetor does not need to persuade them since it is the audience that persuade themselves. One can easily imagine the use made of enthymemes in political . . . [lire la suite]

 “Verbal gaffes” can be defined as violations of the rules and norms of politics. Using Bourdieu’s theory of the political field, this article proposes a typology of verbal gaffes. It identifies three kinds of violations: firstly, the gaffe made by a political aspirant, which will lead to widespread condemnation, the heresy of the outsider who seeks to represent groups who feel marginalized. Secondly, the verbal provocation of the . . . [lire la suite]